IntroductionWelcome| 00:00 | (music playing)
| | 00:04 | Hey there! My name is Justin Seeley.
| | 00:06 | I'd like to welcome you
to GIMP Essential Training.
| | 00:09 | First off, we'll tackle the basics,
like GIMP's interface and tools.
| | 00:13 | From there, we'll move on to one of the
most essential elements of GIMP: layers.
| | 00:17 | Once we've nailed down layers, we'll move on to the
fun stuff, like creating and using masks on your images.
| | 00:23 | I'll show you how to use GIMP's various
selection tools to grab a piece for your image, refine
| | 00:27 | it, and then turn it into a mask to create
composites, or simply make selective adjustments.
| | 00:33 | Next we'll dive into manipulating
images with levels and curves commands.
| | 00:37 | I'm also going to show you how to do things
like creating and editing vector paths, applying
| | 00:41 | text to your designs,
| | 00:43 | how to work with GIMP's painting tools, and
how to speed up your workflow using some of
| | 00:48 | the built-in automation features inside of GIMP.
| | 00:51 | So if you're ready, let's begin our
journey into GIMP Essential Training.
| | 00:55 |
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| Using the exercise files| 00:00 | If you're a premium member of lynda.com
Online Training Library, or if you're watching this
| | 00:04 | course on a DVD, you have access to
the exercise files for this course.
| | 00:09 | The exercise files are broken down into folders,
and each chapter in the course has its own
| | 00:13 | folder, like the one you see here.
| | 00:16 | As I'm going through the course, simply
open the file that is referenced in the movie,
| | 00:19 | and you'll be able to follow along with me step by
step, using the same files that you see on screen.
| | 00:25 | If you're not a premium member of the Online
Training Library, that's okay; you can still
| | 00:28 | follow along with everything I do without
any problem using your own set of files.
| | 00:32 |
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| Configuring GIMP for Windows| 00:00 | Throughout this course, I'll be using a Mac
to show you all the things that we work
| | 00:03 | through inside of GIMP.
| | 00:04 | However, there is a difference between the Mac
version, and PC version, or Windows version of GIMP.
| | 00:09 | On the Mac side, all of the plug-ins that I
use in this course are included by default
| | 00:13 | in the download and installation of GIMP.
| | 00:15 | However, there are three of them that are
missing from the Windows installation that
| | 00:18 | you may need to install yourself.
| | 00:20 | These three are the BIMP, or Batch Image
Manipulation plug-in, the Noise generator plug-in,
| | 00:27 | and also the Layer via Copy/Cut plug-in.
| | 00:31 | These all allow you to do things like
layer via cut/copy, generate noise on an image,
| | 00:36 | and then batch process images as well.
| | 00:39 | You'll see all of this
happen in those respective movies.
| | 00:41 | Now, in order to install these, you'll need
to go to registry.gimp.org, and once on that
| | 00:46 | site, just type in the names of these plug-ins.
| | 00:48 | So, for instance, if you were looking for the
noise generator, you would just type out Noise Generator,
| | 00:54 | and hit Search. Once you hit Search, that should return
the results, and Noise generator should be listed here.
| | 00:59 | Once you click, it should take you to this
page, and on this page, you'll want to scroll
| | 01:03 | down until you find a
section where the downloads are.
| | 01:07 | Now, for this particular plug-in, the Windows
download is down here at the bottom, so you'll
| | 01:11 | have to click this, and then
download it from this link here.
| | 01:14 | The Layer via Cut/Copy; it also has a
section labeled Download, which you'll have to find
| | 01:19 | right here, and it will actually take you
to an external site known as deviantart where
| | 01:23 | you can then download the Layer
via Cut, and Layer via Copy plug-in.
| | 01:27 | The BIMP, or Batch Image Manipulation plug-in,
works much the same way, just go to this Web
| | 01:32 | address right here, you can click on it, it
takes you to the section where you can download
| | 01:36 | it, and then you'll be able to
download it to your computer.
| | 01:38 | Once you have those packages downloaded to
your computer, the process of installing them
| | 01:41 | is actually relatively simple.
| | 01:44 | Let's minimize our Web browser, and go out
here to my Downloads folder. I have got two
| | 01:47 | of those plug-ins here ready to go: the
noise generator, and layer via copy and cut.
| | 01:51 | So what I'm going to do is just right-click
on noise generator, and I'm going to choose
| | 01:54 | Extract All. Then I need to find the
destination folder that I want to put it in.
| | 01:59 | This is where it gets a little bit tricky
if you don't know where to put GIMP plug-ins.
| | 02:03 | So click Browse, go to your Computer, open
up the C Drive, or whatever your default hard
| | 02:09 | drive is, navigate down to Program Files, go
down to GIMP 2, go down to lib, go to gimp,
| | 02:20 | and then select the plug-ins folder. Then
click OK. This should say C:\Program Files\Gimp
| | 02:28 | 2\lib\gimp\2.0\plug-ins.
| | 02:29 | Once that's finished, go ahead and hit Extract.
That's going to show you the new extracted
| | 02:33 | folder right here at the top.
| | 02:35 | And so what you'll need to do now is double-click
on this folder. Inside of that folder is the
| | 02:39 | noise generator, and you can also
grab this other plug-in as well.
| | 02:43 | And then you can just select both of those,
right-click, and choose cut, go back one, select
| | 02:51 | one of these items here in the list, and then
use Control+V on your keyboard to paste them
| | 02:56 | in, and when you do that, noise-generator pops
up; so does the other noise plug-in as well.
| | 03:01 | Now let's go back over into my Downloads,
let's right-click the layer via copy, Extract
| | 03:06 | All, again Browse, Computer > C Drive > Program
Files > Gimp 2 > lib > gimp > 2.0 > plug-ins. Hit OK,
| | 03:24 | check and make sure the file path
is correct, looks good; hit Extract.
| | 03:28 | It may say something like this folder is
already there, if you have already extracted
| | 03:31 | this before, as I have here. If it is, that's
okay; just hit Yes to overwrite it, and we'll
| | 03:36 | say Copy and Replace.
| | 03:42 | Once we do that, I'll scroll down,
and layer-via-copy-cut is there.
| | 03:47 | Now, I had GIMP closed this entire time. If
you had GIMP open, you'll need to close it,
| | 03:52 | and then restart it.
| | 03:53 | Once you restart GIMP, you can then check and
make sure that your plug-ins have loaded correctly.
| | 03:58 | So I can go to Layer, and there is Layer via
Cut, and Layer via Copy right there, and then
| | 04:03 | in Filters section, there is Noise > Noise generator
is right there at the top, and the same would hold
| | 04:09 | true for the Batch Image Manipulation as well.
| | 04:12 | So, as we go through the course, if you see
something that is not in your menu structure
| | 04:16 | by default, or one of filters is missing,
check and see if that filter, or that menu
| | 04:21 | command exists as a plug-in
in the GIMP repository.
| | 04:24 | Once you find it, download it, and install
it, and you should be able to follow along
| | 04:27 | step by step with
everything that I do on the Mac side.
| | 04:30 |
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1. Getting StartedTouring the GIMP interface| 00:00 | When you first launch the GIMP application,
you should see something similar to what I'm
| | 00:04 | showing you here on my screen.
| | 00:06 | GIMP automatically opens up in what I call
an exploded view, where everything is just
| | 00:10 | sort of unattached, and
spread all over the place.
| | 00:13 | You'll have your tools, most likely, on the
left, you'll have a document window somewhere in
| | 00:17 | the middle, and then all of your panels
will be scattered somewhere on the right.
| | 00:21 | If you're using two monitors, your panels may
actually be over on your separate monitor,
| | 00:25 | so if you don't see your panels automatically
over here on the right-hand side, check your
| | 00:28 | extra monitor, and drag them back over.
| | 00:31 | If you would like for all of this to be consolidated
into one single window, you can do that fairly
| | 00:35 | easily by enabling something called Single
Window mode, which I'll get to just a moment.
| | 00:40 | But for now, let's take a tour of the default
GIMP interface, just to get you familiar with
| | 00:44 | what everything is, and how to find
it as we go throughout this course.
| | 00:47 | I am going to start at the top, and work my
way down. You'll notice at the top here, I
| | 00:51 | have several menu items to select from.
| | 00:54 | So if at any point in the course you hear me
say let's go to the Select menu, I am talking
| | 00:57 | about going to the word Select, clicking on it,
and finding the command that I'm talking about.
| | 01:02 | You have a File menu, an Edit menu, a Select
menu, a View menu, an Image menu, Layer, Colors,
| | 01:10 | Tools, Filters, Windows, and of course, Help.
| | 01:15 | Any time in this menu structure if you see
a black triangle out to the right-hand side,
| | 01:18 | that means there is a submenu associated with
it, and you can go find extra tools or commands
| | 01:22 | associated with that topic.
| | 01:24 | If I click away from that,
it will close those menus.
| | 01:27 | Over here on the left-hand side,
we have all of the tools in GIMP.
| | 01:29 | Now, I am going to cover the tools in their
own specific movie a little bit later on,
| | 01:34 | so don't worry about that right now. Just
know that this is where you find all of the
| | 01:37 | tools that you'll be using inside of GIMP.
| | 01:40 | At the bottom of that, you have some color
controls. You've also got some access to your
| | 01:44 | airbrush settings down here.
| | 01:46 | Any time you see a panel that has scrollbars
like this, just click and drag them to navigate
| | 01:52 | your way around inside of that panel.
| | 01:54 | You can also click and drag
this way to go side to side.
| | 01:57 | And if you can't see all of the panel, you
can try maximizing it like this, and then just
| | 02:03 | resizing from the side, like
that, so you can see everything.
| | 02:08 | So at the bottom here, we have buttons that
correspond to saving tool presets, restoring
| | 02:12 | tool presets, deleting them, and
also resetting all the default values.
| | 02:16 | So if you wanted to manipulate the GIMP
toolbar to be smaller, or taller, or whatever you
| | 02:20 | wanted it to be, you could simply click
and drag that around, just like so.
| | 02:25 | On the right-hand side, you've got access to all
of your panels, and the panel system in GIMP
| | 02:28 | is actually pretty well done. You've got access to
things like Layers, Channels, Paths, and Undo History.
| | 02:36 | And you'll notice that as I switch between
these, just by clicking on the tabs, that the
| | 02:40 | options associated with those
switch at the bottom as well.
| | 02:45 | So the Layers is completely different from,
say, Undo History. There's only three options
| | 02:49 | for History, and there are
several available for Layers.
| | 02:53 | You've got the same thing going on down here
at the bottom; you've got your brushes dialog,
| | 02:57 | your patterns dialog, and also your gradients
dialog, and of course, the options for each
| | 03:02 | one of those change
as you go through each one.
| | 03:07 | You'll also notice to the right-hand side
of each one of the panels this little arrow
| | 03:10 | pointing to the left.
| | 03:11 | You can click on that, and that opens up
a whole set of options for this panel.
| | 03:16 | So you can checkout the Layers menu, for instance,
you can add a tab to this panel set, you can
| | 03:22 | also close the tab that
you're currently working on,
| | 03:24 | you can detach the tab into its own
special panel, you can lock this tab to the dock,
| | 03:30 | you can change the preview size, change the
tab style, you can view it as a list, show
| | 03:35 | the button bar, or uncheck that to not show
the button bar, you can show the image selection,
| | 03:40 | auto follow the active image; all of these
things are corresponding to the Layers panel.
| | 03:44 | If I were to switch to, say, the Channels, you
would see some other options that are available
| | 03:49 | to Channels, as well as
Paths, and History as well.
| | 03:54 | So it depends on which tab you are currently
on what options you get in that menu, but
| | 03:58 | the same holds true for this panel down here.
You can see there are a lot of different options
| | 04:02 | associated with that one.
| | 04:04 | If I choose Patterns, there's different options there,
and then Gradients, different options there as well.
| | 04:10 | So again, you've got your tools on the left;
your panels on the right. You've also got
| | 04:15 | your image window right out here in the
middle. You can take this, and sort of move it up,
| | 04:20 | and then resize it by
clicking and dragging, like so.
| | 04:23 | And this sort of gives you a consolidated
window by doing that, but you're still in
| | 04:28 | danger of moving these off to
the side, or something like that.
| | 04:31 | So how do we enable this Single
Window mode, which is new to GIMP 2.8?
| | 04:35 | You go up to the Windows menu,
and you choose Single-Window Mode.
| | 04:39 | And this is actually the mode that I am going
to be working in for the duration of the course.
| | 04:42 | It just makes it easier to find everything,
and it makes it easier for me to show what's
| | 04:46 | going on on my screen.
| | 04:47 | So again, just to Windows, and enable Single-Window
Mode to follow along with the same type of
| | 04:52 | workspace that I'm going to be using.
| | 04:54 | And this is great, because it consolidates
everything. You've got your tools still on
| | 04:57 | the left, big document window out in the middle,
and then all of your panels over here on the
| | 05:02 | right, and again, any time you need to go to a
menu, those are located right across the top.
| | 05:07 | So hopefully by now you have a better understanding
of where everything is inside of GIMP, and
| | 05:11 | also how to consolidate everything into one
single window to make it a little bit easier
| | 05:16 | on you as we continue on our
journey through this course.
| | 05:19 |
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| Exploring the tools| 00:00 | The Tools panel inside of GIMP is really what
makes things work and move inside of the program.
| | 00:06 | This is where you find all of the different
items that you are going to be able to use
| | 00:09 | to manipulate, and fix photos, and create
artwork inside of GIMP. That's over here on
| | 00:14 | the left-hand side. You've got a
wide variety of tools to choose from.
| | 00:18 | Let's start at the top, where we get some basic
selection tools, like a rectangular select tool.
| | 00:23 | We also get an elliptical select tool;
that's where you make circular selections.
| | 00:27 | You've got a Free Select Tool, which is
much like a lasso tool in other applications.
| | 00:31 | You've got something called the Fuzzy Select
Tool, which allows you to select a contiguous
| | 00:35 | region on the basis of color.
| | 00:37 | You've also got a Select by Color Tool, which
allows you to just point and click to select
| | 00:41 | regions with similar colors.
| | 00:43 | You've got a Scissors Tool, which allows you to select
shapes using something called intelligent edge-fitting.
| | 00:49 | You've got a Foreground Select Tool, which
allows you to select a region containing only
| | 00:52 | the foreground objects. That pretty
much rounds out the selection tools, though.
| | 00:56 | After that, you get things like a Paths Tool
to create and edit vector paths. We'll cover
| | 01:00 | that in its own movie later on.
| | 01:02 | You've got a Color Picker Tool; this is basically
like an eyedropper that allows you to sample
| | 01:06 | colors inside of your image.
| | 01:08 | You've got a Zoom Tool; allows you to adjust how
far you're zoomed in or zoomed out on an image.
| | 01:13 | You've got a Measure Tool; you can measure
the distance and the angle of things inside
| | 01:16 | of your GIMP documents.
| | 01:18 | The Move Tool, which is one of the most essential
tools here, allows you to move layer selections
| | 01:22 | and objects around inside of GIMP.
| | 01:25 | You have an Alignment Tool; this allows you
to align or arrange layers and other objects
| | 01:29 | together based on certain criteria.
| | 01:31 | Here is your Crop Tool; it lets you remove
different areas of an image that you don't want anymore.
| | 01:36 | You've got a Rotate Tool; you can rotate
a layer selection or path using this tool.
| | 01:41 | You've also got a Scale Tool; it allows
you to scale things up or down. A Shear Tool,
| | 01:45 | allowing you to change a layer, or
selection, or a path with a sheer adjustment.
| | 01:50 | You can also change something with perspective
using the Perspective Tool. You've got a Flip
| | 01:55 | Tool that allows you to easily
reverse things inside of your documents.
| | 01:58 | You've also got something called Cage Transform.
This allows you to deform a selection with
| | 02:03 | something called a cage. We're going
to cover that a little bit later on.
| | 02:06 | You've got a Text Tool; it allows you to create
and edit text layers inside of your GIMP documents.
| | 02:10 | You've got a Bucket Tool; allows you to
fill selected areas with a color or a pattern.
| | 02:15 | You've got a Blend Tool; this allows you to
actually fill things with a gradient. You've
| | 02:19 | got a Pencil Tool, a Brush Tool, the eraser, you've
got an Airbrush Tool; you've also got the Ink Tool.
| | 02:27 | You've got the Clone Tool, which allows you
selectively copy from an image or pattern
| | 02:31 | using a Brush. This is something that's really
good for photo retouching and restoring old photos.
| | 02:36 | You've also got a Healing Tool; this is great
for retouching portraits, and things like that.
| | 02:41 | You've got a Perspective Clone Tool; this
allows you to clone things actually in perspective,
| | 02:45 | so if something is going away from you, you
can actually perform a cloning operation that
| | 02:49 | will follow that perspective that you set.
| | 02:52 | You've got a Blur and Sharpen Tool here, which
allows you to do selective blurring or unblurring,
| | 02:57 | using a basic brushstroke.
| | 02:59 | You've got a Smudge Tool, where you can just
kind of blob things around, and then finally,
| | 03:04 | you've got the Dodge and Burn Tools, which
allows you to selectively lighten or darken
| | 03:08 | certain areas of your photo.
| | 03:10 | We're going to cover most of these later on
in our chapters as we start to get more into
| | 03:15 | the ins and outs of GIMP, and the techniques
to create different types of images in GIMP.
| | 03:19 | Directly underneath that, we've got our color
controls. Any time you want to access the Color
| | 03:23 | Picker, just click on the color, and you can
change either the foreground or the background
| | 03:28 | color, and you can select your color inside
of here simply by clicking, or you can also
| | 03:33 | mix and match using your
HSV or RGB sliders right here.
| | 03:37 | You can also enter in your HTML notation,
or your hex code values right there, and you
| | 03:43 | can do it that way.
| | 03:45 | You can hit OK to commit, Cancel to
escape, and it goes right back outside.
| | 03:50 | If you ever need to flip-flop these, just
hit this little toggle switch right here, and
| | 03:54 | those will automatically
flip back and forth for you.
| | 03:57 | This is going to be great when you're working
with masking to allow you to easily switch
| | 04:01 | between taking things away, and adding things
to your masks, and we'll cover that a little
| | 04:05 | bit later on as well.
| | 04:07 | So, I hope that this tour of the GIMP tools
has given you a better idea of what you're
| | 04:12 | working with over here, and gives you an
idea of where to find things as you need them,
| | 04:16 | as you're continuing through this course.
| | 04:17 | We are going to be using the GIMP tools quite
a bit, so take some time, familiarize yourself
| | 04:22 | with these, and try to learn the ones that
you are going to be using most often; where
| | 04:26 | they are, how to access them, and you'll be well on
your way to becoming more proficient here inside of GIMP.
| | 04:31 |
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| Creating and saving documents| 00:00 | An essential part to anybody's workflow is
knowing how to create and save the documents
| | 00:04 | that you are going to be working with
inside of the program you're trying to learn.
| | 00:08 | So let's take a look at how we
create a new document here inside of GIMP.
| | 00:11 | I'm going to go to the File menu, and choose
New. You can also go down to Create to create
| | 00:16 | a new document, to create something from
your Clipboard, or from a screenshot, and you can
| | 00:20 | also choose from the different presets, like
Buttons, Logos, New Brush from Text, Patterns,
| | 00:26 | and Web Page Themes as well.
| | 00:28 | I'm just going to go to New to
create a new blank document, though.
| | 00:31 | And inside of the Create a New Image dialog
box, you can select from any one of the templates
| | 00:36 | that's available to you here.
| | 00:37 | They have things like Web, Print, and
also some interesting things, like Toilet paper,
| | 00:44 | CD cover, Floppy labels, Web banners,
and of course, video presets as well.
| | 00:50 | Let's say I wanted to create something for
the Web, and maybe it's a mobile application,
| | 00:53 | or something like that, and I
don't see the size that I want here.
| | 00:56 | That's okay; you can just set
your size independently here.
| | 00:59 | So let's set this to something like 640 and 960,
so that's the size of these new high-definition
| | 01:08 | screens, like on Apple's iPhone, for instance.
| | 01:11 | So once I do that, I can also set
something called Advanced Options here.
| | 01:15 | This is where I can change the resolution, I
can also change the color space, I can choose
| | 01:20 | what the background is filled
with, and add a comment to it as well.
| | 01:23 | So, for instance, if I wanted to make this higher
res, I can just simply come in here and type in,
| | 01:28 | let's say, 300 pixels per inch. Color space is
RGB. Background, let's make that Transparent,
| | 01:38 | and call it My new app mockup.
| | 01:42 | Once I do that, I'll hit OK, and this
creates a brand new document for me.
| | 01:46 | It is 960 pixels tall by 640 pixels wide.
| | 01:52 | It is transparent in the background, and it is
set to 300 pixels per inch. So that's pretty cool.
| | 01:59 | Once I have my new document created, I probably
want to go ahead and save it; that way I can
| | 02:03 | just instantly save any time I want.
| | 02:05 | So in order to save a document, just go
to the File menu, and choose Save, or you can
| | 02:09 | hit Command+S or Control+S on your keyboard,
and once you do that, you are able to save
| | 02:14 | it. So I'll just save this out to my Desktop, and
I'll call this blank_app, and then I'll click Save.
| | 02:21 | Once I do that, it is now saved, blank_app.xcf,
and so once I've done that, now I can close
| | 02:28 | it with Command+W on the Mac, or File > Close, and
then I can open it again by going to File > Open,
| | 02:36 | finding it, and then open it back up, and
there you see it just returns right back to
| | 02:40 | the same state that it was in before.
| | 02:43 | So now that we know how to create new documents
here inside of GIMP, and also how to save them,
| | 02:48 | we're ready to dive right in, and take a
look at some of the "meat and potatoes" of GIMP,
| | 02:54 | like layers, and some of the awesome
tools that we have at our disposal as well.
| | 02:57 |
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2. Working with LayersWhat are layers?| 00:00 | One of the most essential functions of any
image editing application that's really worth
| | 00:04 | its salt is going to be the use of layers,
and GIMP is no exception to that rule.
| | 00:10 | Layers are a big part of anybody's workflow
inside of GIMP, and if you've never used an
| | 00:15 | image editing application before, you
might be wondering exactly what layers are.
| | 00:20 | So in this movie, I'm going to give you a
little bit of insight edge to what layers are, and
| | 00:24 | kind of simplify what they mean in
terms of how they work inside of GIMP.
| | 00:28 | So, what exactly is a layer?
| | 00:30 | Well, if you think of an image, when you
first take a photo, or something like that,
| | 00:34 | inherently it is flat, right?
| | 00:35 | There is no depth to it whatsoever. It's just
one single photo, or one single image that
| | 00:41 | you bring into an image
editing application like GIMP.
| | 00:44 | So most of the time, you'll see something
that looks like this; just one single image on
| | 00:50 | something like a background layer.
| | 00:52 | What I want you to do is think of layers in
terms of a window, and so the Layers panel,
| | 00:58 | in essence, is a window into the
document in which you are creating.
| | 01:02 | And each time you add another layer, or another
image on top of the image that you're working
| | 01:08 | on, you're setting up another layer of depth to
that scene in which you're looking through the window.
| | 01:15 | So right now, I'm looking at the background.
| | 01:17 | So think of this window that we're looking
at right here as the furthest point away from
| | 01:21 | me at any given time.
| | 01:23 | This is how far I have to go back
until I reach the end of the photo.
| | 01:28 | If I turn on this layer here, Window 1, that
steps one layer closer to me; one layer closer
| | 01:34 | to the foreground, because as I go up in the
Layers panel, I'm coming closer to me in the photo.
| | 01:40 | And let's turn on Window 2 here, and so
there's another layer right on top of that, and then
| | 01:45 | finally I'll turn on the text.
| | 01:46 | So the text is the foremost object that we
see, it says Layers, and then as we step back
| | 01:51 | through the windows, you can see the
different layers that we have. So behind Window 2 is
| | 01:56 | Window 1, and behind the
Window 1 is the background.
| | 01:59 | Now I've disabled these two layers in the
middle, leaving only this layer on top, so
| | 02:04 | I should see the text, and the
original background, right? Just like that.
| | 02:08 | So when you are talking in terms of a layered
composition, basically what you're talking
| | 02:11 | about is just several sheets of paper, or
several photographs layered on top of one another
| | 02:17 | that can be manipulated individually, changed
individually, and altered in any way you see
| | 02:22 | fit here inside of the canvas.
| | 02:24 | The canvas is locked into the rectangular
form factor that you see here, and it cannot
| | 02:29 | be changed. Although the size might differ
from document to document, it will always
| | 02:33 | be landlocked into this rectangular
or square setting that you see here.
| | 02:39 | Layers, however, have a little bit more freedom
in that the layers themselves, like this text
| | 02:43 | layer, for instance, can
take on the form of letters.
| | 02:46 | They can be transformed, rotated, skewed,
scaled; whatever you want to do to them, they
| | 02:51 | can have done to them
here inside of this document.
| | 02:54 | There are no constraints on the layers themselves;
only a constraint on the canvas that surrounds it.
| | 03:00 | So as you continue to build new things in
GIMP, whether it's an advertisement, a Web site
| | 03:05 | mockup, just working on a photo, whatever
that might be, adding layers to your document
| | 03:10 | is a great way to ensure that you get the
most out of that document, and it's also a
| | 03:15 | great way to ensure that you're being what
we call nondestructive to that document as
| | 03:19 | well, because as you work in layers, you can
always take away, redo, undo, move, change,
| | 03:25 | scale; do whatever you need to do to those
layers in order to make them work with the
| | 03:30 | layers underneath them.
| | 03:31 | You also have the ability to
blend these layers together as well.
| | 03:35 | Now, if I wanted to, let's say, move the
layer's text here, that's very simple.
| | 03:39 | I just select the Move Tool, and I'll just grab
that layer, and I can just move it anywhere I want.
| | 03:44 | You notice it moves independent of
the rest of the objects in the scene.
| | 03:48 | Let's turn on the other two windows, like so,
and I'll grab Window 2 here, and I'm just going
| | 03:53 | to move it over to the left.
| | 03:55 | And so you can see Window 2 moves over.
| | 03:57 | There is Window 1 directly underneath that.
Let's click on Window 1, and let's move it
| | 04:01 | a little bit to the right.
| | 04:02 | So you can still see a little bit of it, and then the
background is actually shining through both of those.
| | 04:08 | So there you can see, I've moved all of these objects
independently of one another, which is pretty neat.
| | 04:14 | Now, I can also, let's say, take this tool, the Rotate
Tool, and I can just give this a little bit of rotation.
| | 04:22 | And we'll cover how to rotate in a
later movie, but I just want to show you.
| | 04:25 | So here we go; I'll rotate that.
| | 04:26 | So as you can see, the background layer has now
been rotated. You can see specs of transparency.
| | 04:31 | That's, again, because the canvas area is landlocked
to this rectangular form factor, but the layers
| | 04:36 | themselves are able to be independently manipulated
and controlled, because they live on separate
| | 04:42 | planes from the actual document itself.
| | 04:45 | So as you look in the Layers panel here, there
is actually an invisible layer that actually
| | 04:49 | doesn't show up in here. That's the canvas, the
background; the firm background layer of this document.
| | 04:55 | That's the square form
factor that cannot be changed.
| | 04:58 | Anything on top of that, from the bottom to
the top, goes backward to forward all the way
| | 05:03 | until what's fully in the foreground,
which is at the top of the Layers panel.
| | 05:08 | So as you work in this program, or in any program that
has layers, that's basically what you're dealing with.
| | 05:13 | You're dealing with a stack of objects that
can be manipulated, scaled, rotated independently
| | 05:17 | of each other, changed independently of each
other, relative to the document. It's a great
| | 05:22 | way to work, and I really encourage you to do so.
| | 05:25 | So as we continue to explore layers inside
of this chapter, I encourage you to play around
| | 05:31 | with them, see what all they can do, and
then put them to play in your personal workflow.
| | 05:35 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Exploring the Layers palette| 00:00 | Before we get started with the ins and outs
of working with layers, I think it's important
| | 00:04 | for us to understand what the Layers panel
actually is, and what it does here inside of GIMP,
| | 00:09 | so in this movie, we're going to be
taking a brief tour of the Layers panel.
| | 00:13 | The Layers panel is located over here on your
right-hand side, most likely, and you can actually
| | 00:16 | click and drag to bring it out, just by
clicking and dragging the tab, like so.
| | 00:21 | I'm also going to resize it a little bit, so
we can see it, and I'll move it right here.
| | 00:25 | So let's start from the top, down.
| | 00:26 | At the top here, you see it says Layers.
| | 00:29 | You've got the Layers tab, indicating that's
the current tab that you have opened. You've
| | 00:32 | also got a menu item here that allows you
to configure the tab, so you can actually
| | 00:36 | go into the Layers menu from here,
and select many different items.
| | 00:40 | You can add tabs to it, close tabs, lock
this tab to a dock, and do all different kinds
| | 00:45 | of things to customize the
appearance of the Layers panel.
| | 00:48 | But we also have the ability to
do things like change blend modes.
| | 00:51 | I'm going to explain to you exactly what blend
modes are, and how they work in a future movie,
| | 00:55 | so don't worry about those right now.
| | 00:57 | You've also got Opacity controls. If
you're not sure what layer opacity means, that's
| | 01:01 | okay. We'll talk about that
in a future movie as well.
| | 01:04 | Directly underneath that, you have the Lock
options where you can lock either the pixel
| | 01:08 | values, or lock the
transparency or alpha channel value.
| | 01:11 | Basically what this is saying is, if I
click this, that means lock the pixels that are
| | 01:15 | present in this layer.
| | 01:16 | So for instance, I'm working on the type layer
right now, so if I were to select this, I wouldn't
| | 01:20 | be able to change anywhere that is
currently being filled with pixel data,
| | 01:24 | so anywhere like where it says LAYERS.
| | 01:26 | If I were to click this button here, it would
lock all of the transparent area, so all of
| | 01:30 | the area around the type would then
be locked, so I couldn't change it.
| | 01:34 | I could do whatever I wanted to the inside of the
type, but nothing outside of it would be affected.
| | 01:39 | Directly underneath that you'll see a list of all
of the current layers you have in your document.
| | 01:43 | Right now I currently have four layers. I
have a Background layer, Window 1, Window 2,
| | 01:47 | and a text layer that says LAYERS.
| | 01:50 | You'll notice that image layers have a small
thumbnail, indicating that they are an image
| | 01:54 | layer, and giving you a preview of
what that image actually looks like,
| | 01:58 | while text layers are denoted by a small
black T on top of a little piece of paper; that
| | 02:03 | indicates that you are
then working on a text layer.
| | 02:05 | To select the layer, simply click on it with
your mouse anywhere through this region here,
| | 02:09 | and it will automatically select that layer.
| | 02:11 | You are then in control of that layer, so
right now I'm controlling Window 2, or this
| | 02:16 | yellow wall layer here.
| | 02:17 | If I were to click on Window 1, which you
cannot see, because it's behind Window 2, I'm
| | 02:23 | now controlling that layer.
| | 02:24 | Same if I were to click on the Background layer.
| | 02:26 | Clicking on that automatically switches me
to control that layer. Now anything that I do, I
| | 02:31 | am now doing it to that Background layer.
| | 02:34 | To the left-hand side, you're going to see
little eyeballs. The eyeballs indicate visibility,
| | 02:37 | so if I were to toggle the eyeball icon next to
the text layer, it's going to turn that layer off.
| | 02:42 | That layer is still there; it
is just invisible at the moment.
| | 02:46 | So if I were to tap it
back on, it comes right back.
| | 02:49 | Same thing for Window 2; I can temporarily hide it,
and turn it back on just by clicking those on and off.
| | 02:54 | Window 1, same thing, although you are not
seeing it. If I turn off Window 2, you'll notice
| | 02:59 | both of those are now transparent, and
I'm only seeing the Background layer.
| | 03:03 | Turning off the Background layer, I see nothing
but the text, and the transparent background.
| | 03:07 | I can then refill everything
back on by toggling the eyeballs.
| | 03:12 | There is also this little item here; if I
click on that, that is going to link items together.
| | 03:18 | We'll talk about linking
layers a little bit later on.
| | 03:21 | Directly underneath the layer list you will
see different icons where you can create a
| | 03:25 | new layer, create a new layer group, raise
this layer one step, or take it down one step
| | 03:32 | in the stacking order.
| | 03:33 | You can also create a duplicate of the
layer, and add it to the image you're working on.
| | 03:37 | You can anchor a floating object,
and also delete a layer as well.
| | 03:42 | So the Layers panel is essentially like the
control panel for your entire document. You
| | 03:47 | want to get to know this really well, because
this is where you're going to be rearranging
| | 03:51 | things, gaining control of specific objects
inside of your composition, and also controlling
| | 03:56 | the visibility, opacity, and blend modes of all
of the objects inside of your composition as well.
| | 04:02 | So if the tools over here on the left are
your steering wheel, think of this as, like,
| | 04:06 | your GPS navigation, or your instruments panel
inside of your car, and in order to make anything
| | 04:12 | work, you have to have both of
those working in conjunction.
| | 04:14 | So you've got to know your tools, and you've
got to know how to work your instruments as
| | 04:18 | well, and that's what the
Layers panel is all about.
| | 04:21 | So take some time, get yourself familiar with
where everything is inside the Layers panel,
| | 04:25 | and then you'll be ready to continue moving
forward to learn about how to manipulate these
| | 04:28 | layers, and change all the various types
of settings and details about them as well.
| | 04:32 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating and deleting layers| 00:00 | The process for creating and deleting layers
is one of the more basic functions that you
| | 00:04 | can perform here inside of GIMP, but it's
also one of the most useful, because as you
| | 00:08 | continue to create things inside of GIMP,
you need to know how to create layers, and
| | 00:11 | you also need to know how to get rid
of the ones you don't want anymore.
| | 00:15 | So, in order to create a layer here inside of
GIMP, it's actually pretty simple, and there's
| | 00:18 | a ton of different ways to do it.
| | 00:20 | All you have to do if you have something on
your Clipboard is just paste a new item into
| | 00:24 | your GIMP document; that becomes a layer. If
you create some text, that becomes a layer.
| | 00:29 | If you create a new layer from the Layers
panel, that is a new layer on top of all the
| | 00:33 | rest of layers you're working on. So there
are multiple ways to do this. Let me show
| | 00:37 | you some of the easier ones to do.
| | 00:39 | So if I wanted to create a brand new layer
on top of all the layers I have here in the
| | 00:42 | Layers panel, I just select the topmost layer,
go down to the bottom, and here's this button
| | 00:46 | that says Create a new layer and add it to
the image, and so if I do that, it's going
| | 00:51 | to automatically give me
the New Layer dialog box.
| | 00:53 | The New Layer dialog box allows me the name
the layer, so I'll just call this Empty Layer.
| | 00:57 | It's going to ask me for a Width and a Height.
| | 01:00 | Normally this is going to just be the
width and height of the current document you're
| | 01:03 | working on; you don't need to change that.
| | 01:05 | The Layer Fill Type; you want to fill it with a
color, like your Foreground color, your Background
| | 01:09 | color, White, or do you want it to be transparent. In
this case, I just want it to be transparent, so I'll hit OK.
| | 01:14 | I am not going to see anything physically
happen to the image that I'm working on, but
| | 01:18 | I do see a new layer inside of my
Layers panel called Empty Layer.
| | 01:22 | So if I wanted to put something inside of
this layer -- let's say I found an image online
| | 01:26 | that I wanted to paste into this -- I could
simply go to the Edit menu, and I can choose
| | 01:29 | Paste Into. I could also say Paste as a New
Image, a New Layer; whatever I wanted to do.
| | 01:37 | If you find that you don't need a layer in
your Layers panel, and you want to get rid
| | 01:40 | of that layer, all you have to do is select
the layer, and then find the little trashcan
| | 01:44 | icon, and tap on the trashcan.
That's going to automatically remove it.
| | 01:48 | Unlike other applications, GIMP doesn't
give you a warning that you're about to delete
| | 01:51 | this layer. Once it's
trashed, it's pretty much gone.
| | 01:55 | You can go to the Edit menu, and choose Undo
Remove Layer, or hit Command+Z or Control+Z on
| | 01:59 | your keyboard, and that will bring back that
layer again, but again, to remove it, just the
| | 02:04 | trashcan, and otherwise it's history.
| | 02:07 | You can also take a look at the Layers
menu at the top, and in the Layer menu, you can
| | 02:10 | say New Layer, New layer from Visible, New
Layer Group; you can also duplicate a layer.
| | 02:17 | Let's take a look at some of these.
| | 02:18 | So if wanted to create a new layer from here, it
just brings up the same dialog box that I had before.
| | 02:24 | I could also do that with a keyboard shortcut:
Shift+Command, or Shift+Control, and the letter
| | 02:29 | N brings up the same dialog box.
| | 02:32 | If I choose Layer > New from Visible, basically
what that does is give me a merged copy of
| | 02:38 | all the layers underneath.
| | 02:39 | So now if I turn off all the layers underneath
this new layer I just created, you can see
| | 02:43 | that my composition looks the same, but
it's merely a flattened version of that.
| | 02:48 | As you can see here in the little preview window, it
looks like what I had before, only it's a flat copy of it.
| | 02:53 | If I turn on the rest of those layers, and
then remove this layer, nothing actually changes,
| | 02:59 | but all my layers are still there.
| | 03:01 | This is a great way to instantly create what's
called a comp of what you're working on. Then
| | 03:06 | you could copy that to a new document,
save it out as a JPEG, and send it to a client
| | 03:10 | for quick approval.
| | 03:11 | You can also choose Layer, and choose Duplicate,
or hit the keyboard shortcut Shift+Command,
| | 03:16 | or Shift+Control, and letter D.
| | 03:18 | Basically what that's going to do is just
simply going to duplicate the current layer
| | 03:22 | that you're working on. So you can see here
I have LAYERS, which is the text layer, and
| | 03:26 | right above that, LAYERS #1,
indicating it's a copy of that layer.
| | 03:30 | Again, to throw that away I could just simply
take it down, and drag it to the trash, or I
| | 03:34 | could have just clicked the trashcan
icon; that would have done the exact same thing.
| | 03:38 | So again, in order to create a new layer, you
have multiple options: you can paste new objects
| | 03:43 | into your document, you can create a new
layer from the button in the Layers panel, you can
| | 03:47 | also choose the Layer menu, you can hit the
keyboard shortcut, or you can also duplicate
| | 03:52 | or merge layers into a new
copy layer in any way you see fit.
| | 03:57 | So layers, as we know, one of the most essential
parts of our workflow here inside of GIMP.
| | 04:02 | There are multiple ways to create them, and
throw them away, and hopefully by now you
| | 04:06 | understand them all.
| | 04:07 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Linking layers together| 00:00 | Although in most cases you're going to want
to edit and transform your layers independently
| | 00:04 | of one another, and that's essentially why
layers are created to begin with, because
| | 00:08 | you want individual control over
all the elements in your composition,
| | 00:12 | chances are you're going to want to move
and transform a few objects together, or at the
| | 00:17 | same time during the course of your use of
this program. And so from time to time, you
| | 00:22 | may find that you need to
actually link certain objects together.
| | 00:26 | So in this movie, I'm going to explore how we
can link objects together here inside of GIMP.
| | 00:30 | So I've got my Layers panel open here, and
you'll notice to the left-hand side of the
| | 00:34 | layers, there is this little box, and as you
hover over it, you can see that the little
| | 00:38 | box pops up on each individual layer.
| | 00:41 | If you click inside of that little box, it
enables a small chain link, and as it goes
| | 00:45 | up, it starts connecting
all of the layers together.
| | 00:49 | What this means is if I were to select any
of these layers now, and then move them, you
| | 00:54 | notice that they all move. There's nothing
in the background now, because they've all
| | 00:58 | moved together. They're all moved just like
that, because they're all linked together.
| | 01:02 | Let me undo that with Command+Z or Control+Z.
I'll unlink all of these, so you can see what's
| | 01:07 | going on, and then let's just link the LAYERS
text layer on top, and let's link the Background
| | 01:14 | layer, just like so.
| | 01:15 | When I do that, I can click, and move the text,
and the Background layer -- you'll notice that
| | 01:21 | this layer stays in place.
| | 01:23 | If you look at the background thumbnail closely,
you'll see the transparent edge over here
| | 01:26 | on the right; that indicates that that has
been moved. If I turn off the two middle layers,
| | 01:30 | you'll see it indeed has been moved in
conjunction with the text layer on top. Why?
| | 01:35 | Because those two layers are now linked.
Those two chain links are connected.
| | 01:40 | Now, let's undo that. I'll just step back using
Command+Z or Control+Z until I'll get everything
| | 01:45 | back to normal, and let's unhook these two
layers, and let's hook up Window 2 with the
| | 01:52 | text layers here, and I'll click on LAYERS,
and just move it over to the left, and down
| | 01:58 | a little bit to the left as well.
| | 02:01 | So there you see I have moved these two objects.
The rest of the objects are in place still.
| | 02:05 | If I turn these off, you'll see that there we go:
there is Window 1, and the Background layer.
| | 02:10 | They stay independent, but any time I move
the LAYERS, and Window 2, they move together.
| | 02:17 | I can move them around anywhere
I see fit, and they are now connected.
| | 02:22 | And that's the benefit of linking layers together:
you have the option to move, scale, transform,
| | 02:28 | rotate, whatever it is, these objects are now
linked together, and are able to be manipulated
| | 02:33 | together at the same time.
| | 02:34 | Anytime you want to unlink them,
just unclick the links, like so.
| | 02:40 | So again, to link any two objects together,
just click, and click to link them together.
| | 02:45 | But you have to remember that you don't want
to make the chain go all the way down if you
| | 02:50 | just want this layer and
this layer to be selected.
| | 02:53 | This link right here has to be missing,
because this is connected to this. Connecting this
| | 02:58 | enables a three-way chain, and all
of those will be moved together.
| | 03:00 | So you have to be careful when linking objects
together as well, but just use these little
| | 03:06 | indicators to the left, and you'll automatically
know exactly what's linked together, what's
| | 03:11 | not, and you'll be able to decipher documents
as you open them up to see exactly why certain
| | 03:16 | things are moving, and why certain
things might not be moving as well.
| | 03:18 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Changing the stacking order| 00:00 | Earlier in this chapter I discussed how I
look at the Layers panel as being a window
| | 00:04 | into the document that I'm working on, and
inside of that window, I have the ability to
| | 00:09 | see all the way from the
foreground to the background.
| | 00:12 | I also have the ability within that window to
reach in, and grab an object in the background,
| | 00:17 | and pull it to the front by changing its stacking
order, and in this movie, I'm going to explore
| | 00:23 | exactly how we do that.
| | 00:24 | So let's say, for instance, that the background
layer here, I actually want that to be on
| | 00:28 | top of these other two layers, so that
it's directly behind the text LAYERS.
| | 00:33 | In order to do that, I can do it one of two
ways. I can just simply take it, grab it, and
| | 00:38 | move it up in the stacking order, like so.
| | 00:40 | When I see a black line appear, I drop it wherever
I want it to go, and it takes on that position
| | 00:46 | in the stacking order.
| | 00:48 | So I've essentially reached back into that
window, grabbed the Background layer, and moved
| | 00:52 | it two places forward, and
then let go with my hand.
| | 00:56 | Let's move it back for just a second.
| | 00:57 | I can also just select the layer, and you
this little green arrow right here? I can just
| | 01:03 | click it once, click it twice, and it does
the exact same thing, so this is essentially
| | 01:08 | like a little hand tool.
| | 01:09 | So, when you click this, whatever layer you
have selected, you are basically reaching in,
| | 01:14 | grabbing that layer, and moving it up one
level in the stacking order, or one level closer
| | 01:18 | to you in the window that
goes back into your document.
| | 01:22 | You can also move it down by clicking
this, and moving it all the way back down.
| | 01:27 | That's the same thing as taking it, and placing it
back a level or two in the stacking order as well.
| | 01:34 | So again, if you'd like to rearrange the
stacking order of layers here inside of GIMP, you can
| | 01:38 | do it one of two ways: clicking and dragging
the item to a new place in the stacking order,
| | 01:44 | or simply by selecting the object, and clicking
these little green arrows here at the bottom
| | 01:51 | of the Layers panel.
| | 01:52 | Either way, it's a very quick and easy process for
rearranging all of the objects inside of your composition.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Exploring blend modes| 00:00 | One of the easiest ways to make layers interact
with one another is to change something called
| | 00:04 | a layer mode, which is sometimes also
known as a blending mode in other applications.
| | 00:09 | In GIMP, it's actually very easy to change
the layer mode of layers, and that's what I'm
| | 00:13 | going to be showing you
how to do in this movie.
| | 00:17 | First thing's first; I'm going to disable temporarily
the LAYERS text layer here, and I'm going to
| | 00:20 | make sure I'm working on Window 2, and I'm
going to blend Window 2 with Window 1 using
| | 00:25 | some of the different blend modes, or layer
modes that are available to me inside of GIMP.
| | 00:30 | There are certain groups of layer modes, as
you can see when you open this up; there is
| | 00:33 | a bigger gap in between some of these little
listings here, and that indicates a different
| | 00:38 | grouping of the layer modes.
| | 00:40 | And so at the top we've got Normal. Then
we've got some that lighten your image; these are
| | 00:44 | lightening blend modes right here. You've got
some darkening blend modes right here. You've
| | 00:49 | also got some contrast blend modes here, and
towards the bottom we've got some color blend modes.
| | 00:54 | Now, there are big technical definitions
for what all of these do, and basically that's
| | 01:00 | just going to be a waste of your time to learn
all the technical definitions of these, because
| | 01:04 | in the end, it all comes down to
what looks best to you and your eye.
| | 01:09 | So my suggestion is to know exactly what
type of effect you're going for, then come
| | 01:14 | in, and based off of what set of blend modes
you think you need to use, pick and choose
| | 01:18 | the one in that set that
you think looks the best.
| | 01:20 | So for instance, if I wanted to blend this
layer with the layer underneath it, and I wanted
| | 01:24 | the resulting image to be lighter, I
would pick one of the lightening blend modes.
| | 01:29 | So I might choose something like Screen.
| | 01:32 | If that looks good, then I would stick with
it. If not, I might choose one of the other
| | 01:36 | ones, like Dodge, or Lighten
only; something like that.
| | 01:41 | You can always revert back to Normal
to see the difference between the two.
| | 01:45 | Let's say that I wanted it to be darker. I
might try something like Multiply; that creates
| | 01:49 | a darker image. Or let's try
Darken only, or maybe even Burn.
| | 01:56 | You can see each one of these creates a
darker image than the image I had before.
| | 02:00 | What if I wanted to just increase the contrast?
| | 02:02 | Okay, let's see; Overlay, Soft light,
Hard light, something like that.
| | 02:10 | As you can see, each one of the blend modes
offers its own unique way of blending one
| | 02:15 | layer with another. Knowing which category
to dive into makes it a little bit easier
| | 02:20 | for you, and then it's just basically
pick and choose which one you like.
| | 02:24 | So for instance, if I wanted to change this
to one of the color blend modes, like Hue,
| | 02:29 | Saturation, Color, or Value; like I said, it's
basically a pick and choose game when it comes
| | 02:38 | to blend modes, because every one is going
to be different depending on what the layer
| | 02:42 | on top looks like
compared to the layer underneath.
| | 02:45 | For instance, if I turn off Window 2, select
Window 1, and then let's blend Window 1 with
| | 02:50 | the Background, let's change this to
Screen. Completely different appearance than what
| | 02:56 | the others showed me.
| | 02:57 | Let's do Multiply; again, completely
different. Hard light, Saturation,
| | 03:06 | as you can see, depending on the effect that
I want, I can pick any number of these blend
| | 03:11 | modes or layer modes here to get exactly the
look that I'm looking for. But just remember
| | 03:16 | that the layer modes or blend modes are
broken down into groups which make it a little bit
| | 03:19 | easier for you to see exactly
what you want. So again, let's review.
| | 03:24 | Inside of the Mode dropdown menu, you have
some lightening blend modes -- things that will
| | 03:28 | result in a lighter image -- you've got some
darkening blend modes, some contrasting blend
| | 03:33 | modes, and you've also got some color
blend modes down here at the bottom.
| | 03:36 | Now, the one group I didn't touch on are things
like Difference, and things like that. These
| | 03:39 | create some pretty interesting effects, like
Subtract, Grain extract, Grain merge, Divide;
| | 03:48 | those are some pretty high contrast, out there
kind of effects. They don't really fall into
| | 03:53 | any of the other categories, but they do create
some pretty nifty little effects, so you might
| | 03:57 | want to play with those as well.
| | 03:59 | As you start to get more creative with your
compositions here inside of GIMP, using blend
| | 04:03 | modes or layer modes is going to be an essential
part of that, because that's how you're going
| | 04:07 | to make layers interact with
each other on a very simple basis.
| | 04:12 | So determine the look you're going for, find
the group that suits that need, and then pick
| | 04:16 | the mode that looks the best.
| | 04:19 | That's essentially how to use blend
modes or layer modes here inside of GIMP.
| | 04:23 |
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| Transforming a layer| 00:00 | Another one of the basic functions that you'll
want to perform on a layer is a transformation.
| | 00:06 | Whether it's scaling the object, rotating
the object, or simply moving it around.
| | 00:12 | Transformations are essential to any layer-based
workflow, because you're not going to stick
| | 00:16 | with just what you put down on the canvas
initially for very long, and so in this movie,
| | 00:20 | we are going to explore the various ways that
we can transform a layer here inside of GIMP.
| | 00:25 | The first thing I'm going to do is make sure
that I'm working on the text layer that says
| | 00:28 | LAYERS here in the document, and I'm going
to then go up to the Layer menu, and let's
| | 00:32 | go down to Transform, and we can see all the
different options that we have available to us.
| | 00:37 | So we have things like Flip Horizontally,
Flip Vertically, Rotate 90 degrees clockwise
| | 00:42 | and counter-clockwise, Rotate 180 degrees,
Arbitrary Rotation, and Offset as well.
| | 00:49 | So I can then go and pick one of these, let's
say Flip Horizontally, and it automatically
| | 00:53 | applies that transformation to the layer.
You can undo that with Command+Z or Control+Z
| | 00:58 | on your keyboard, or by going to Edit > Undo, and
you can also get to this menu by right-clicking
| | 01:03 | on the object choosing Layer, and then selecting
Transform, and then picking from the Options again.
| | 01:08 | So let's say, for instance, I wanted to rotate
this, but I want to do it arbitrarily; I don't
| | 01:12 | want to do it in 90 degree increments. I'll
hit Arbitrary Rotation; that's going to bring
| | 01:16 | this up right here, and I can just start to
click and move this little slider, and it will
| | 01:22 | rotate the object for me.
| | 01:25 | Once I get it in the position that I want it
to be in, I can just hit the Rotate button,
| | 01:32 | and it rotates my image accordingly. Pretty neat.
Command+Z or Control+Z undoes that action for you.
| | 01:38 | You can also use the tools over here in the
Tools panel to do this as well there was a
| | 01:42 | Rotate Tool, which when I select that, I can
come out and click on the object, do the same
| | 01:46 | thing; rotate it around. Cancel gets me out.
| | 01:51 | I also have a Scale Tool, which allows me to
come out, and click, and scale the object, or
| | 01:55 | I could simply go to the Layer menu, choose
Scale Layer, and inside of the Scale Layer
| | 02:00 | dialog box, I could then set this to do whatever
I need it to. So for instance, here I want this
| | 02:05 | to be, let's say, 500 pixels wide. I'll just
change that to 500 pixels, press the Tab key,
| | 02:11 | as long as this little chain link is connected,
the height should automatically scale with
| | 02:15 | it, and I'll hit Scale, and it scales up.
Command+Z or Control+Z will undo that for me.
| | 02:21 | If you want to move your layer around, simply
select the Move Tool, it's right here, and
| | 02:26 | just click on it, and move it around.
| | 02:29 | When you are dealing with text layers, though,
or layers that have transparency, you have
| | 02:32 | to be careful, because let's say that I selected
the Move Tool, and then clicked down here to
| | 02:36 | move it. Watch what happens.
| | 02:38 | I am temporarily selecting the layer behind
it, because I've not actually clicked on that
| | 02:43 | layer, so you have to be careful of that.
You have to actually click right here on the
| | 02:46 | physical pixel area of the layer, and then
move it to wherever you need it to go, then
| | 02:50 | release your mouse. So that's a little trick
for you, in terms of manipulating layers around.
| | 02:56 | Now, there are tons of ways to manipulate
layers, and they all lie within the tools and the
| | 03:00 | menu structure here inside of GIMP. So
take some time and explore the Layer menu.
| | 03:05 | Go down to the Transform section, play around
with all of these different options you have
| | 03:10 | available to you. Also explore the Tools panel.
Things like the Rotate, Scale, Shear, Perspective
| | 03:17 | tools; play around with those, and see exactly
what they do when you are manipulating your
| | 03:22 | layers here inside of GIMP, and you'll be pleasantly
surprised at the amount of creative control
| | 03:26 | you get over the individual
objects in your composition.
| | 03:29 |
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| Adjusting layer transparency| 00:00 | The final piece of the layers puzzle is opacity
or transparency, and in this movie, I am going
| | 00:06 | to be showing you how to adjust the
transparency or opacity value of your layers.
| | 00:12 | Now, you may be wondering, what's the
difference between opacity and transparency?
| | 00:15 | Well, essentially nothing.
| | 00:17 | Opacity refers to how opaque the object is,
| | 00:20 | transparency refers to how transparent
the object is, and vice versa.
| | 00:23 | So basically it's, how much can you see through
the object that you're currently working on?
| | 00:28 | So, right now this object is set to a 100% Opacity,
or 0% transparency. There is no transparency
| | 00:35 | happening on this particular object that I'm
working on, because you can't see through it.
| | 00:40 | No,w it's obviously transparent around the
edges, because I can see behind it, but I can't
| | 00:44 | actually see through it.
| | 00:45 | So what I want to do is change the opacity of
this in order to make it sort of semi-transparent.
| | 00:52 | In order to do that, I'm going to come here,
and as you can see, I can just take this little
| | 00:55 | arrow down, and change the Opacity. As I do that, you
should see that the layer becomes semi-transparent.
| | 01:04 | All the way down to -- let's get to about 50%.
There we go; now you can just see directly
| | 01:08 | through that right on into that window.
| | 01:11 | I can also take this little slider, and click and
drag it to the right to increase the Opacity, or
| | 01:19 | decrease the transparency of that.
Pretty simple.
| | 01:23 | So again, all you have to do is select the
object that you want to change the transparency
| | 01:28 | for, then come up to the transparency section,
and you'll notice that the arrow changes quite
| | 01:33 | a bit as you go through here.
| | 01:35 | Watch this. When I am here, it's a very slow
moving process, right? When I have the two arrows
| | 01:39 | facing left and right?
| | 01:40 | If I go to where it's
facing up, watch how fast it goes.
| | 01:44 | So you can actually do a much quicker adjustment
here, then switch to this, and do a more refined
| | 01:50 | adjustment this way to get it exactly
dialed in where you want it to go.
| | 01:55 | So that's pretty neat as well.
| | 01:57 | So accompany this Opacity control with a blend
mode, and you get some really neat abilities
| | 02:03 | to control what the layers do, and how they
interact with each other here inside of GIMP.
| | 02:07 | So remember, to change the Opacity of a layer,
make sure you have that layer selected, then
| | 02:11 | come up here, and just simply click and drag
across, or tap the arrows up or down, or you
| | 02:21 | can simply select the text, and enter in a value,
like 40%, and hit Enter to change it on the fly.
| | 02:28 | So, pretty quick, pretty easy, but an awesome
way to control the look and feel of your document
| | 02:34 | simply by altering the opacity or
transparency value of your layers.
| | 02:39 |
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|
|
3. Creating Selections and MasksWorking with basic selection tools| 00:00 | The use of selection tools in any image manipulation
program is one of the most essential operations
| | 00:05 | that you can learn.
| | 00:07 | In this movie, we're going to be exploring
the basic selection tools that are available
| | 00:10 | to you inside of GIMP.
| | 00:12 | In this document that I have open here,
you're going to see a number of shapes onscreen.
| | 00:16 | However, these shapes are all merged onto
one layer, meaning that I don't have individual
| | 00:21 | control over them at all, so if I try to click and move,
say, this red square, I actually move the entire photo.
| | 00:27 | I'm going to undo that with Command+Z or
Control+Z. So what I want to do here is actually
| | 00:32 | make a selection around these different
shapes, and then turn them into layers, so that I
| | 00:37 | can then have individual control
over each element that I see onscreen.
| | 00:42 | In order to do that, I am going to have to
use the selection tools that are available
| | 00:45 | to me inside of GIMP.
| | 00:47 | The two basic selection tools that you have
are this one right here, the rectangular select
| | 00:51 | tool, or Rectangle Select Tool, and also the
Ellipse Select Tool. This allows you to make
| | 00:56 | a circular selection; the first one allows
you to make a square or rectangular selection.
| | 01:01 | So in order to use these, you simply click
on them to activate the tool you want to use,
| | 01:05 | and then you just come out here, you want to
make sure, if you're trying to select something
| | 01:08 | like a square, make sure the targets sort
of line up with the square, just like so, and
| | 01:13 | then just click with your
mouse, and drag out a selection.
| | 01:17 | Once you get the selection around the object
that you are trying to select, then all you
| | 01:21 | have to do is release your mouse, and you get an active
selection around that object. Let's try that again.
| | 01:27 | I'm going to go up to Select, and choose None.
That's going to deactivate my selection, and
| | 01:32 | now I am just going to try it again. So
let's go over here to this one, I'll line up my
| | 01:36 | little targets, click,
and we'll drag out, like so.
| | 01:41 | Once I get it around the object I am trying to
select, I let go, and I get an active selection.
| | 01:47 | Now let's try the elliptical tool.
| | 01:48 | I'll go over and grab that tool.
| | 01:50 | This time I'm going to go Select > None again. You
can also press the keyboard shortcut Shift+Command+A
| | 01:55 | in order to do that.
| | 01:56 | So, with the elliptical tool, it's a little
bit of a challenge, but all you have to do
| | 02:00 | is just kind of line it up with the top and
the left-hand side, and then draw out your
| | 02:05 | selection; something like this. And you may
not get it perfect every time, and that's
| | 02:09 | okay; you can always just
restart, and do it again.
| | 02:12 | That's pretty close. There you go.
| | 02:13 | You get an active selection. You'll get better
at this over time. You just have to come in
| | 02:19 | and open up a document like this, and practice
making elliptical selections, and making rectangular
| | 02:23 | selections to really get really good at it.
| | 02:26 | Let's try the keyboard shortcut Shift+Command+A
to deselect, and let's try this shape over here.
| | 02:30 | I'm going to go over here to about where
this starts, and drag out a selection this way.
| | 02:37 | As you can see, I am a little off on my
selection, and that's okay; you can always
| | 02:43 | modify that if you need to. Just drag it in
once it's made, there we go, and line it back up.
| | 02:50 | So that's the basic operations for these
selection tools, and what these selection
| | 02:55 | tools allow you to do is grab a certain piece of
your design -- like for instance, this circle --
| | 02:59 | and then you can actually move that to its
own layer. And so you could say, right here,
| | 03:04 | you go up to the Layer menu, and you could
actually go in and say new Layer via Cut,
| | 03:10 | and when you do that, you're going to see
here, I get a new layer called Layer via Cut.
| | 03:15 | If I turn off the Background layer, you're
only going to see that magenta circle underneath.
| | 03:20 | Let's turn that back on.
| | 03:21 | Now let's go up here, and do the same thing
with the square. I'll grab my Rectangular Marquee
| | 03:24 | Tool, and I'll come up here and just
make a selection around this red box.
| | 03:30 | Once I get my active selection, I'll make
sure I'm working on the Background layer --
| | 03:33 | always make sure you're targeting the right
layer when doing this -- and then go up to the
| | 03:37 | Layer menu, and choose new Layer via Cut.
| | 03:40 | That gives me that layer on its own, and let's
continue on. Let's do this blue one right
| | 03:45 | here. There we go. And make sure I am targeting
the Background layer. Layer, new Layer via Cut.
| | 03:55 | Finally, let's target the Background layer
one more time. I'll grab my Ellipse Select
| | 03:59 | Tool, and I'll make a rough
selection around this one.
| | 04:04 | Remember, if you don't get it perfect right
off the bat, that's okay; you can always come
| | 04:08 | up and adjust just by going to the edge, and
clicking and dragging down, or over, or however
| | 04:14 | far you need to go.
| | 04:16 | Once you have an active selection around it,
make sure you are targeting the right layer,
| | 04:19 | go to Layer > Layer via Cut.
| | 04:22 | And so now I'll turn off all the layers, except
for my Background layer. You'll see that I've
| | 04:26 | actually just kind of made it almost like
a cookie-cutter type thing, where I cut them
| | 04:30 | all out, and if I throw the Background layer
away, and then turn on all the other layers,
| | 04:37 | you see I've now got my four shapes all on their
own layer, able to be independently controlled,
| | 04:43 | scaled, modified, or whatever using any of
the tools that are available to me in GIMP.
| | 04:47 | So hopefully now you have a better understanding
of the basic selection tools here inside of
| | 04:52 | GIMP, and how to use those to select various
regions of your artwork, and also how to then
| | 04:57 | take your selections, and transform them
into layers, so that you can separate what once
| | 05:01 | was a flat composition, and
turn it into a nice layered file.
| | 05:05 |
s
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| Using the Free Select tool| 00:00 | In addition to the basic rectangle and elliptical
selection tools, you also have access to something
| | 00:05 | called the Free Select Tool inside of GIMP.
| | 00:09 | The Free Select Tool allows you to make selections
based upon a freely drawn region that you
| | 00:14 | create with your mouse, and also by using
polygonal lines as well. So if you hover over this
| | 00:19 | tool, it looks like a little lasso, and in
other applications, like Photoshop, it may be
| | 00:23 | referred to as the Lasso tool, but in GIMP,
it's actually called the Free Select Tool,
| | 00:27 | and you can see that it allows you select a hand
drawn region with free and polygonal segments.
| | 00:32 | And so what that means is basically you can
come out here, once you select the tool, you
| | 00:36 | can come out here, and you can just draw freehanded
selections around in your document. Once
| | 00:43 | you get back to your original spot, you'll
see a little yellow dot indicating you are
| | 00:46 | about to close the selection. You can release
your mouse, and then the selection follows
| | 00:51 | wherever you just drew.
| | 00:53 | The cool thing about this tool is it's actually
two tools in one. So if I go to Select, and
| | 00:58 | choose None, I'll show you
exactly what I mean here.
| | 01:01 | So I can just come out here, and I can
start drawing with the selection tool.
| | 01:04 | Watch what happens when I let go
my mouse while I am still drawing.
| | 01:07 | I do that; I now have the ability to do a
straight line. I can click to end a point,
| | 01:14 | click to end a point; same way all the way
around. If I want to draw again, I go to my
| | 01:19 | next point, and click, and draw until I get
all the way back around, and then you can see
| | 01:26 | where it stops. And so what I did, I actually
meshed two different types of selections:
| | 01:31 | a freehand selection, and also
straight line selections as well.
| | 01:36 | Let's go up and choose Select, and choose None, and
let's try to make a rough selection of the dog here.
| | 01:42 | So I am going to come here, and I am just
going to draw around the dog. You don't have to
| | 01:44 | do a really good selection, but this is great
practice, because this dog has lots of nice,
| | 01:48 | subtle curves around it.
| | 01:49 | So we are just going to go around like this.
| | 01:52 | And again, drawing with a mouse is pretty difficult,
but you can get pretty good at it if you practice enough.
| | 01:58 | I am just going to go around like this.
| | 02:01 | If you make a mistake, that's okay.
| | 02:04 | First time is always the hardest time. There
we go, just following the contour of the dog.
| | 02:13 | I am getting a little bit
outside the lines, but that's okay.
| | 02:17 | Now we are just going to draw around, and
again, I am just doing this with the mouse.
| | 02:21 | Now, when I get to this point here, I am going
to let go of my mouse, because this is a relatively
| | 02:25 | straight line right here,
| | 02:27 | So I am just going to go down, and click, and then
of course we get to do the sides like that as well.
| | 02:33 | So I'll just come over here, click, and then I'll
come back up and finish my selection with a click.
| | 02:39 | So I freehand traced around the outside of
the dog, and then once I got down here, I
| | 02:44 | did a straight line down, a straight line
over, and a straight line up, using this Free
| | 02:48 | Select Tool. So I'm able to actually create
a much more refined selection by mixing in
| | 02:55 | the freehand drawing, and the
polygonal lasso-like elements.
| | 03:00 | So take some time and practice with this. I
know it's not going to be perfect the first
| | 03:03 | time that you do it, but as you get more adept
using this, you are going to find it to be
| | 03:07 | an amazing tool, because it allows you
to combine these two types of selections.
| | 03:12 | This is going to be great for selecting buildings, for
selecting people around buildings, and things like that.
| | 03:17 | It's also going to be great for animals, and things
like that, where they combine straight lines and curves.
| | 03:22 | Just every day selections never have only
curves, or only straight lines; they always
| | 03:26 | mix the two, and having a tool that allows
you to do both is a very powerful thing.
| | 03:31 | So again, this is called the Free Select Tool.
It's available to you in the toolbar over
| | 03:35 | here, and it allows you to combine hand-drawn
regions with this free polygonal segment
| | 03:40 | that you create as well. Very quick, and very
easy to make some decent selections from this,
| | 03:45 | and if you see, if I went up to the Layer
menu now, and I chose new Layer via Copy, I can
| | 03:50 | actually create a new copy of the dog.
I'll turn off the bottom layer, and you can see
| | 03:54 | I did a pretty decent job of selecting the
dog. There is only a few different areas that
| | 03:58 | I would need to refine to make this a decent
composite that I could then move into another scene.
| | 04:03 | So in just a few short and easy steps, we've
done a great deal of the legwork that's going
| | 04:08 | to be involved in taking this dog from one
scene to another, and we did that all with
| | 04:12 | the Free Select Tool.
| | 04:13 | So take some time, learn this tool;
you will be really glad you did.
| | 04:16 |
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| Using Fuzzy Select| 00:00 | Another nice tool that you have at your disposal
inside of GIMP when it comes to making selections
| | 00:04 | is something called the Fuzzy Select tool.
| | 00:08 | This is actually pretty neat little tool.
It is basically the same kind of tool as
| | 00:12 | we would see in somrthing like a magic wand
tool in Photoshop, or something like that.
| | 00:17 | It basically allows you to make selections based
on certain criteria that you set up ahead of time.
| | 00:23 | And so the Fuzzy Select tool is
located right here in the toolbar.
| | 00:26 | I'm actually going to expand on my toolbar
little bit, so you can see little bit of more
| | 00:30 | what's going on. So there's my toolbar, and my
tool options appear right down here at the bottom.
| | 00:35 | So I have got my Fuzzy Select Tool selected,
and down here at the bottom we have several
| | 00:38 | different tool options.
| | 00:39 | We haven't talked about tool options yet,
but the Fuzzy Select Tool is one of the best
| | 00:42 | tools to discuss these.
| | 00:44 | These are available to you, in most cases,
when you're working with selection tools.
| | 00:47 | So Free Select, the elliptical, and rectangular
marquee tools all have that specific tool options section.
| | 00:55 | But the Fuzzy Select Tool has these, and I
think it's one more important tool option
| | 00:59 | sets that you have.
| | 01:01 | So let's select the Fuzzy Select Tool. I
have still got the same dog photo open here,
| | 01:04 | and we are going to take a look at
some of the options that you have.
| | 01:07 | First of all, the mode. This is going to be
the same type of mode choices that you have
| | 01:11 | in all of the Select tools.
| | 01:12 | So, the first one is just replace the current
selection, so as you draw out a selection,
| | 01:16 | each time you draw out another
selection, it replaces the other one.
| | 01:19 | You can also say add to the current selection,
so you've already got something selected on
| | 01:24 | screen, you want to add to that, you come
down and click this button first; that way
| | 01:27 | it saves your previous selection along with it.
| | 01:30 | Subtract from the current selection, so if
you have already got something onscreen, you
| | 01:33 | selected something you didn't want,
| | 01:34 | you could go in and then subtract from it.
And then intersect with the current selection;
| | 01:38 | basically what that's going to do is exclude
all of the areas outside of where you intersect
| | 01:43 | with the current selection, and
only keep the intersected portion.
| | 01:47 | Now, you can also control whether or not you
put anti-aliasing on your selection. I would
| | 01:51 | recommend doing that; it create smoother edges.
| | 01:52 | I can also feather the edges to make this
a little bit smoother. I am going to show
| | 01:56 | exactly what that means in just a moment.
| | 01:58 | And then we've got select
transparent areas as well.
| | 02:01 | This allows completely transparent
regions to be selected within your document.
| | 02:05 | And then we've got a threshold.
| | 02:07 | So basically, how much color difference does
there need to be between areas you're selecting
| | 02:11 | in order for this to pick up on it?
| | 02:13 | So for instance, if I were to crank this up
to something like 98, and then come out here,
| | 02:20 | you would see that it picks
up a great deal of information.
| | 02:23 | See all the little marching ants out
there that indicate what I have selected?
| | 02:26 | Now let's go to Select > None. I will crank
this back down to around 15, and then I will
| | 02:34 | click again. Notice it only selects this little
tiny region here instead of most of the dog.
| | 02:40 | So the higher this threshold goes, the less
difference there has to be between things
| | 02:46 | for this tool to pick it up.
| | 02:48 | The lower the threshold, the
more difference there has to be.
| | 02:51 | So right now it's only picking up regions
that are similar to exactly where I clicked.
| | 02:56 | If I had increased the threshold, I clicked
right there, it would've picked up anything
| | 03:00 | that was relatively close to that area in
terms of color, and tone, and things like that.
| | 03:05 | You can also choose what to select it by.
| | 03:07 | You can choose the composite image, which is
what we are doing here. You can also do it
| | 03:11 | based on channel; either the red channel, the
green channel, or the blue channel. You can
| | 03:14 | do it based on hue, based on
saturation, or based on value.
| | 03:18 | In this case, I am going to
just use composite though.
| | 03:20 | Now, let's go ahead and just keep this at
around 15 for the threshold; that's okay.
| | 03:26 | I am going to Select > None,
| | 03:29 | and one of the things you need to aware of
when you are using the Fuzzy Select Tool is
| | 03:32 | oftentimes it's better to use the more simple
solution than to try to select the more complex.
| | 03:39 | And what I mean by that is, in this photograph
right here, you're trying to select the dog, right?
| | 03:43 | Well, most people would come out, and try
to click on the dog to try to select it.
| | 03:47 | Well, that's going to select just these small
pieces here, and you are going to wind up clicking
| | 03:51 | different areas all over the dog, and really
having some trouble selecting it really well.
| | 03:56 | The simple solution -- I am going to go to Select >
None real quick to just wipe out my selection.
| | 04:01 | The simple thing to do; notice how the background
is all black? Just click on the black background;
| | 04:06 | that's going to select
everything around the dog.
| | 04:09 | And then once you do that,
just go select, and choose Invert.
| | 04:12 | Now you have just the dog selected.
| | 04:14 | So oftentimes, like I said, the
simplest solution is the best solution.
| | 04:19 | So if you are working with an image where
something you are trying to select has multiple
| | 04:22 | colors, multiple tones, and it's very difficult
to select it, take look at the background
| | 04:26 | elements around that object, and see if
those offer more of a continuous tone, or more of
| | 04:32 | an even surface for you to select,
like this black background does here.
| | 04:36 | If that's the case, then select the background
elements first, and then invert the selection
| | 04:42 | to select the object you are trying to select.
| | 04:45 | Now, I have talked before about feathering
the selection. So, right now we're not going
| | 04:49 | to feather the selection. I am just going
to stick with this, I am going to go to Layer,
| | 04:52 | and I am going to choose new Layer via
Copy. That creates a new layer for me,
| | 04:56 | And if I turn off the Background layer, you
can kind of see the selection that I've made.
| | 05:00 | And I am actually going to select my Background
layer here -- this is just for demonstration
| | 05:04 | purposes; you don't have to do this
if you don't want to, but just to show you --
| | 05:07 | I am going to use the Background layer
here, and create a new layer on top of it, just
| | 05:11 | a new layer, and I am
going to fill it with white.
| | 05:13 | That way you can kind of
see the edges around the dog.
| | 05:16 | You can kind of see here that it's okay;
there are some choppy areas, there are little
| | 05:21 | areas of black around the outside that need
to be refined, and if I zoom in, you can really
| | 05:26 | start to see those areas right there.
| | 05:28 | By the way, I am zooming in by using Shift+Plus on my
keyboard, and you zoom out by just pressing the minus key.
| | 05:35 | So I am going to keep these in the document.
I am going to turn them off for now, though,
| | 05:40 | and then go back to my Background layer.
| | 05:42 | And once I'm back on the Background layer,
I'm going to choose Feather edge, and let's
| | 05:46 | just do a 10 pixel Radius feather,
| | 05:50 | and I'll make a selection around the dog.
| | 05:53 | And once I do that, now let's go and choose
Layer > Layer via copy, and you can see there
| | 05:59 | I actually made my own mistake
that I warned you about awhile ago.
| | 06:02 | Check this out, if I turn this off: I actually made
a selection of the background, and didn't invert it.
| | 06:07 | So let's throw that away. Let's go
back to the Background; turn it back on.
| | 06:13 | And I will click out here in the background
area, and then go to Select > Invert. There we go.
| | 06:19 | So now I've got that. Layer, new Layer via copy;
that's going to give me a new copy of the dog.
| | 06:25 | I'm going to move this up in the stacking
order in between that Empty Layer, and I'm
| | 06:31 | going to turn the Empty Layer back on.
| | 06:33 | So now when I zoom in on this, look how smooth
the edges are around the dog? Do you see that?
| | 06:39 | No longer is it choppy; it's got a nice kind
of faded out edge around that, making it really
| | 06:43 | nice looking, actually.
| | 06:44 | I will zoom back out a little bit. That
gives it a nice soft transition from the dog
| | 06:48 | to the background, making it look a
little more realistic, in my opinion.
| | 06:52 | It's not so much just cut
out of paper looking anymore.
| | 06:56 | And I could actually adjust the Feather Radius
to make it even more realistic along the way,
| | 07:00 | but the feathering actually does wonders for
making your selections look so much better.
| | 07:05 | So I'm going to take these layers now, and I
am just going to throw them away, so I will
| | 07:08 | just delete these one at a time
| | 07:11 | until I get back to the Background layer.
So let's take a look at this one more time.
| | 07:15 | I am just going to start on the Background
layer. I am going to make sure I have my Fuzzy
| | 07:19 | Select Tool selected.
| | 07:20 | I am going to make sure the mode is set to
Replace. Antialiasing is turned on. Feathering
| | 07:25 | is going to be set -- let's change that
this time to something like 10 pixels.
| | 07:32 | Oh, let's crank it up: about 15 pixels.
| | 07:35 | That will work. Okay.
| | 07:36 | So 15 pixels for that.
| | 07:38 | And Threshold, we will
leave that at 15. That's okay.
| | 07:42 | And then I am going to
come out here in the document,
| | 07:44 | and once I am out inside the document, I am
going to click in the black area, and inside
| | 07:48 | that black area you
should see the marching ants.
| | 07:50 | I am going to go to Select > Invert. That's
going to select the dog. Layer > Layer via Copy.
| | 07:59 | And then let's create a new layer, fill it
with white, move it down underneath that, and
| | 08:06 | see the selections.
| | 08:07 | So there you can see the feathered edge around the
outside. It's no longer a hard edge; looks pretty good.
| | 08:12 | I could go in and refine
that any time I wanted to,
| | 08:15 | and I could also make a new selection using
the fuzzy select, or actually refine it with
| | 08:19 | any of the other tools that
are available to me as well.
| | 08:22 | So there you have it. That is the Fuzzy Select
Tool inside of GIMP. It's a really interesting
| | 08:27 | tool. It's kind of like a magic wand
meets a quick select kind of thing going on.
| | 08:32 | It works really well, especially when you
nail down the settings. It might take you
| | 08:36 | a couple of tries to get it exactly right,
| | 08:39 | but once you nail down the settings, you can
get some pretty interesting looks, and some
| | 08:42 | really nice selections.
| | 08:44 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating selections by color| 00:00 | Now, we have already looked at the tool called
the Fuzzy Select Tool, which allowed us to
| | 00:03 | make continuous selections based on certain
criteria that we brushed over inside of our
| | 00:08 | document, like color, hue,
saturation, and things like that,
| | 00:11 | but we also have access to a tool which allows
us to select purely on the color in which
| | 00:17 | we are clicking on at any
one time in our document,
| | 00:20 | and this is called me Select by Color Tool,
which selects regions with "similar colors".
| | 00:26 | And so you can actually determine how similar
the colors have to be inside of the tool options,
| | 00:32 | and you do that by adjusting
something called the Threshold.
| | 00:34 | So really what we want to do here is we want
to basically generate a selection around this
| | 00:39 | lady who is on the green screen
right now, and make her her own layer,
| | 00:43 | and we want to do that by quickly and
easily removing the green from the background.
| | 00:47 | We have to be careful, though, because there
are shades of green in her jacket, there's
| | 00:51 | also some green in the packages she's holding,
| | 00:53 | so we're really going to have to
work at it to get a decent selection.
| | 00:57 | So I am just going to
start off with the basics here,
| | 01:00 | so I have got my Mode set
to Replace; Antialiasing is on.
| | 01:03 | I am not going to Feather edges right now.
I do want Select transparent areas on, even
| | 01:07 | though there is no transparency right now,
| | 01:10 | and my threshold is at 15.
| | 01:11 | I'm okay with that being at 15 for right now.
I just want to see exactly what happens when
| | 01:16 | I use it at 15. 15 should be the default.
| | 01:18 | I am just going to come out here in the document;
I am going to click one time in the green
| | 01:21 | area outside of the lady.
| | 01:23 | Once I have that selection on, I can sort
of start to zoom in to see just how good the
| | 01:28 | selection is, and I will pan
around to kind of see how we are doing.
| | 01:32 | So we are missing some areas in here; we are
picking some areas we don't need around there.
| | 01:37 | Overall, though, it's not too bad.
| | 01:39 | You notice that it's actually
ignoring most of the present, which is good.
| | 01:42 | There are some areas in here that
it's selecting that it doesn't need to.
| | 01:46 | Some areas around here that we would need
to clean up, but nothing I can't live with.
| | 01:49 | So all in all, not a bad selection, but
still not exactly what I'm looking for.
| | 01:54 | So what I am going to do now is I'm going
to actually increase the threshold a little
| | 01:57 | bit to see if it picks up a
little bit more of the area.
| | 02:00 | So let's do Shift+Command+A on the keyboard,
Shift+Control+A if you are on a PC, and that's
| | 02:04 | going to deselect everything, and then what I
am going to them do is change the Threshold
| | 02:09 | amount, so let's say something like 25,
| | 02:13 | and press Enter. I'll make sure
I am working on the Composite.
| | 02:17 | I am going to come right back out here, I
am just going to click somewhere in the green,
| | 02:19 | and let's see how much
better this does this time.
| | 02:22 | So there we go. You see it's a
little tighter on the shoulder.
| | 02:25 | It does pick up some more information in the
middle here, and that's okay; I can always
| | 02:29 | get rid of that later.
| | 02:31 | But it does a much better job at getting
a little bit tighter around the edges.
| | 02:35 | So increasing the Threshold a little bit,
because she's got some green contamination in her
| | 02:38 | hair and things like that,
| | 02:40 | but that's all stuff I
would have to clean up later.
| | 02:41 | That does a pretty
good job around the jeans.
| | 02:44 | I think I don't see any major areas
around there that I would need to clean up.
| | 02:49 | So for the most part, I think we are good.
| | 02:52 | So what I am going to do, though; I am going
to feather the edges on this a little bit,
| | 02:56 | and so let's crank this up to a maybe something
like 15 pixels; see what that does for it.
| | 03:03 | Make sure, again, the Threshold, 25; working
on the composite, so we are all good. I am
| | 03:07 | going to do Shift+Command+A one
more time to deselect everything.
| | 03:10 | And let's try it one
more time; I will just click.
| | 03:12 | It's going to take a minute, because it's
having to feather, and do all that work,
| | 03:16 | and there we go. Makes a good selection. You can see
where it's going to feather around the edges there,
| | 03:20 | and that's okay.
| | 03:23 | If you want to pan around in your document
while you're making a selection, you can just
| | 03:27 | temporarily hold down the Spacebar key;
that's going to allow you to pan around in
| | 03:31 | the document, and you can let go of your Spacebar key.
It will automatically give you back your Selection tool.
| | 03:37 | And let's see here; everything looks pretty good.
| | 03:42 | If I needed to clean anything up later on,
I could; it wouldn't be a big deal to do that.
| | 03:47 | Alright, so there we go.
| | 03:49 | And so now what we're going to do is turn this
into its own layer, and see exactly what we've got.
| | 03:54 | Let's go to Layer > Layer via copy.
| | 03:58 | And you can see here that I've done the same
mistake I did earlier; I actually turned the
| | 04:01 | Background into its own
layer instead of the lady,
| | 04:04 | so let's undo that. Command+X, or Control+Z
until it gets back to where we were.
| | 04:08 | I am going to go up to the Select menu, choose
Invert; that's going to select the lady, and
| | 04:14 | then go to Layer > Layer via Copy. That should
give me her on her own layer; there we go.
| | 04:20 | And I'll create a new blank layer, fill it with
white, hit OK, and move that underneath. There we go.
| | 04:26 | Now let's zoom out a little bit, so we
can see kind of what we are working with here.
| | 04:30 | Now, that's not bad. There's obviously some
green tinting around the outside, which we
| | 04:35 | could sort of adjust on our own.
| | 04:37 | I think the feathering was
way too high on this at 15 pixels.
| | 04:41 | So it wasn't quite as nice as I
needed it to be, but that's an easy fix.
| | 04:45 | So I will just go ahead and
select that layer; toss it away.
| | 04:48 | I will keep my Empty Layer,
though, and temporarily hide it.
| | 04:51 | Let's go back to the green screen, and we
are still working with our color layer.
| | 04:55 | Let's turn the Feather Radius down to something
like 5 pixels, and let's try this again. I
| | 05:01 | will click somewhere in the green.
| | 05:03 | That's going to make my rough selection
around the outside. I am going to make sure it's
| | 05:06 | not picking up anything extra.
It's not; looks pretty good.
| | 05:09 | Now let's go up to Select
menu. Let's invert that;
| | 05:13 | that way I'm only selecting the lady, and we will go
up to the Layer menu, and choose new Layer via Copy.
| | 05:19 | That's going to give me her on her own layer,
and I'll drag her up above Empty Layer now.
| | 05:25 | Activate the Empty Layer,
and let's see what we've got.
| | 05:30 | That actually looks pretty good. I will zoom
in a little bit, so you can see a little better.
| | 05:35 | I would have to do some refinement around the
edges a little bit; probably have to decontaminate
| | 05:39 | some of the colors around the hair.
| | 05:41 | But all in all, not a bad job just
moving her from one background to another.
| | 05:46 | And I did that by using,
again, the Select by Color Tool.
| | 05:50 | So one more time to review;
let's throw these layers away.
| | 05:52 | What we are going to do is we are going to
find a picture that we want to select a region
| | 05:56 | of color with. We are then going to select
the Select by Color Tool. We are going to
| | 06:00 | make sure that we are feathering the edge,
so we don't get that really harsh transition
| | 06:04 | between foreground and background.
| | 06:05 | We are going to adjust Threshold to pick up exactly
the amount of colors we want, again, knowing
| | 06:10 | that this is going to be sort of a click and
pick kind of process, where we just click once,
| | 06:14 | see if we like it, and then pick
some more settings, and click again.
| | 06:17 | And then once we get it nailed down, we can
then turn our selection into its own layer,
| | 06:21 | or even turn it into a mask, which I'll eventually
show you how to do later on in this chapter.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using Intelligent Scissors| 00:00 | The final selection tool that we are going
to be talking about in this chapter is something
| | 00:04 | called intelligent scissors,
| | 00:06 | and this is an interesting tool, because it
requires no skill, and there's no real set
| | 00:11 | up for it at all. You
just click it, and start using it,
| | 00:14 | and pretty much hope for the best.
| | 00:16 | In most cases, it works okay. There are
times when it gets a little bit out of control,
| | 00:20 | but you can go in, and sort of re-educate
it as you go around it as well.
| | 00:26 | Basically what the intelligent scissors are --
and you can find them right here; they look
| | 00:29 | like little scissors --
| | 00:30 | it tells you that it allows you select shapes
using intelligent edge fitting technology.
| | 00:34 | Basically what it's going to do is look for
contrast between the object you are selecting
| | 00:38 | around, and the objects around it, and attempt to
auto-fit the selection around a certain object.
| | 00:45 | Now, what object it chooses to select is pretty
much based on its own preference, especially
| | 00:50 | if you're working in a busy scene.
| | 00:51 | Now, in this scene we have here, we've got this little
jumping guy, and he's pretty much black-and-white, right?
| | 00:56 | It's easy to see where he ends,
and where the background begins.
| | 00:59 | But if this was a crowded street, it
would be really difficult to make this work.
| | 01:04 | So this is not necessarily the best
tool for making really good selections.
| | 01:08 | This is a great tool for making very basic,
very quick selections, and for making selections
| | 01:14 | of objects that have a really good
definition between them and their background.
| | 01:18 | And so basically what I'm going to doing here
is I'm going to be working with the scissors
| | 01:22 | tool to try to move this guy from this photo
over into this crazy looking background here.
| | 01:28 | And so in order to do that, I'm going to use the
scissors tool; the intelligent scissors in order that.
| | 01:34 | Now, I can also feather the edges when I do
this, but I'm not going to. You can also turn
| | 01:38 | on something called Interactive boundary.
| | 01:40 | When you hover over this, it says it displays future
selection segments as you drag a control node around.
| | 01:46 | And I'm going to actually leave this on. I will
show you what it does a little bit later on. It
| | 01:51 | should be off by default,
| | 01:52 | so if it's not turned on already, go ahead
and make sure it's got a checkmark next to it.
| | 01:55 | I am also going to zoom in a few times;
Shift+Plus on my keyboard in order to get here.
| | 02:01 | And so the first thing you want to do is
just come out here somewhere on the object, and
| | 02:04 | you want to just make
what I call a starting point.
| | 02:07 | So just find a place to start, and click one
time, and that's going to set your first point.
| | 02:12 | You can then find another point around the
edge, and click, and you can see that it just
| | 02:16 | sort of intelligently knows where to go.
| | 02:19 | And so I will just
continue down, working my way down,
| | 02:23 | and again, you can use the
spacebar key to pan around.
| | 02:25 | And you don't want to go too far, because if
we go too far around this thing, it gets a
| | 02:29 | little confused, and sometimes kind
of juts out from where it should be.
| | 02:33 | So I am just going to gradually work my way
around, setting these little control points.
| | 02:38 | If it gets out of control, that's okay;
you can always go back in after you're done,
| | 02:43 | and refine it. Try to go up a
little bit here; there we go. Fits nicely.
| | 02:48 | You can create some bigger spaces
as you go around, and that's okay.
| | 02:55 | And again, like I said, it's just for making a
rough selections; it's not going to get anything
| | 02:58 | real refined, but it does a fairly
decent job of knowing where to go.
| | 03:03 | You can see there it didn't really do exactly
what it should have there, but I can go back
| | 03:08 | in and fix that little bit later.
| | 03:10 | See, I missed that point again, but again,
it's doing a fairly decent job. I am not having
| | 03:15 | to be really careful with this thing at all,
like I would with a lasso tool, for instance.
| | 03:21 | Now let's pan up, and again, I am just
holding down the spacebar key to pan around.
| | 03:26 | There we go, and I will go around. This is going
to some tricky areas in here, because it gets
| | 03:32 | really close to other areas, so you've got
be a little bit more careful with it.
| | 03:37 | And back around the arm again.
| | 03:43 | You can see the areas where it messes up, and
like I said, you can always go back in later,
| | 03:47 | and touch those up. That's the beauty
of selections: they are never finished,
| | 03:53 | they just get to a point
where you can tolerate them.
| | 03:56 | So let's go around the
outside here, and try to finish up.
| | 04:03 | And once you to get to the point where you
see that little circle, like I see there, should
| | 04:10 | be able to click, and finish.
| | 04:11 | What you're looking for is for this
to turn into a dancing ants selection.
| | 04:15 | So you can see it made a pretty decent rough
selection of this, but there are still some
| | 04:20 | areas where I would need to
go in, and re-touch that up.
| | 04:23 | And so in order to retouch it, basically
what I do is I grab the Free Select Tool, and I
| | 04:27 | come out here, and I will set
this to subtract mode first,
| | 04:32 | and I'll go around and subtract areas from the
selection that I don't want anymore. There we go.
| | 04:47 | And once I do that, there we go,
subtract that area, and there we go.
| | 04:54 | And again, this is just a little areas
that I am wanting to clean up here.
| | 04:57 | Just drag across this one, and you want to
make sure your little yellow dot shows up,
| | 05:03 | so you can complete that.
there you go; cleaned up that spot.
| | 05:05 | And if you wanted to, you can also just come in here,
and do a straight line selection here; click.
| | 05:12 | And you can go back around, and again, I am
using the minus selection tool, so it's doing
| | 05:18 | a little bit of cleanup work for me.
| | 05:20 | If I want to add to the selection, like I might
want to do here, I need to switch modes to
| | 05:24 | add to current selection,
| | 05:26 | and then I can just come out, and basically trace
around the areas that I want to add to it, like so.
| | 05:33 | Again, I am just doing this fairly quickly
to give you an idea of what this is supposed
| | 05:38 | to look like, and once I get that in there, let's close
that up, there we go; got a little bit more than we need.
| | 05:44 | Let's add in some of the foot. There we go.
| | 05:52 | So you kind of get the idea of
what we're looking to do here.
| | 05:59 | And this area up here is not really refined. I could
go ahead and add some stuff to it, like the head.
| | 06:06 | Always make sure you complete your selections
by coming back, and making sure that little
| | 06:12 | yellow dot connects; there we go.
| | 06:13 | And so basically what I can do now is I can
take the selection -- I know it's still kind
| | 06:17 | of rough, but that's okay. I could take
this, and then move it to another document. I do
| | 06:21 | that by just going to Edit > Copy, and
let's move over here, and let's do Edit > Paste.
| | 06:25 | You can kind of see that it pastes that in.
Shift+Command+A to deselect everything.
| | 06:34 | And once that happens, you can kind of see
there would be some areas that I would need
| | 06:37 | to seriously go in and retouch, but for the basic
selection part of it, it did actually pretty good.
| | 06:42 | So again, with the intelligent scissors, what
you want to do is go in, and get as close you
| | 06:45 | can to the edge. It's not going to make a great
selection every time, obviously, as you can see here,
| | 06:50 | but for big, broad shapes that have good
distinction between color regions, it does fairly well
| | 06:55 | of using that intelligent scissor technology to
adhere to the edges, and get exactly what you want.
| | 07:01 | Then you can go in with the other selection
tools that you have at your disposal, and clean
| | 07:05 | things up in order to make the
selection a little bit more refined.
| | 07:08 | And then once you're done, move that object
over into another document, or however you
| | 07:13 | need to manipulate it; move it
to a new layer, or what have you.
| | 07:16 | The intelligent scissors give you a great
starting point to base a selection off of,
| | 07:20 | and then you use the rest of the tools in the suite to
refine it, and get exactly the result that you need.
| | 07:25 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Layer masking explained| 00:00 | Up until now during this chapter, we've been
actually taking our selections, and turning
| | 00:04 | them into their own layers
in a very destructive manner.
| | 00:08 | However, now it's time to talk about how to utilize
selections in a way that is very nondestructive,
| | 00:14 | and also very useful, by turning them
into something called a layer mask.
| | 00:19 | But I understand that you might not
understand exactly what a layer mask actually is,
| | 00:23 | so I'm going to spend a few moments talking
about exactly what layer masking is, and what
| | 00:28 | it means to you and your workflow.
| | 00:30 | As you can see here, I've got a picture of a
dog, and the picture of the dog is actually
| | 00:34 | on a black background, but it's been masked out, so
that you see the white background showing through.
| | 00:40 | If you look over in the Layers panel, you'll notice
the picture of the dog, and also a black and white
| | 00:45 | sort of silhouette of the dog
over on right-hand side of it.
| | 00:48 | That indicates that there is a layer mask
applied to this layer, and anywhere that you
| | 00:52 | see black on that mask is currently hiding
that portion of the layer; anywhere that you
| | 00:57 | see white is currently showing it.
| | 00:59 | If you go up to the Layer menu, go down to
Mask, and choose Show Layer Mask, this is
| | 01:05 | going to actually show you
what this looks like.
| | 01:07 | So anywhere that's white, that's where
the dog is actually showing through. Anywhere
| | 01:11 | it is black, that's what is being hidden.
| | 01:14 | And so basically how you can think of this
is white reveals, and black conceals when it
| | 01:19 | comes to layer masking, and that's the true
principle through most any image editing application
| | 01:25 | is that black conceals, and white reveals.
| | 01:27 | Now, you can also back to the Layer menu, go
to Mask, and turn that off, so you can see the
| | 01:32 | image in its entirety.
| | 01:34 | You can also turn the
layer mask off if you wish.
| | 01:37 | So you can go to in Layer > Mask, and then choose
Disable Layer Mask, and when you disable it,
| | 01:42 | you'll notice a red box appears around the
outside of it, and you can see the original
| | 01:46 | image of the dog on the black background.
| | 01:49 | If you want to turn the Mask back on, just
go back up to Layer > Mask, and choose Disable
| | 01:55 | Layer Mask again, and it will
automatically turn it back on for you.
| | 02:00 | So essentially what you're doing here is just
applying some white out to your screen, basically.
| | 02:06 | You're just saying, okay, this area I want to
temporarily erase; I want to temporarily get rid of.
| | 02:12 | You're not actually getting rid of the pixels,
because they're still there. You saw that
| | 02:15 | when I chose to disable the layer mask,
everything behind that is still there.
| | 02:20 | I'm merely putting something over the top of it
to hide it, or mask it, so I'm hiding everything
| | 02:26 | but the dog, in this case,
| | 02:28 | and that's exactly what
masking is intended to do.
| | 02:31 | It's intended to temporarily hide portions
of an image, so that you can see what's behind
| | 02:36 | it by using this masking technique.
| | 02:38 | So for instance, if I want to change
the background color, I can do that.
| | 02:41 |
Let's pick a different color here. Let's
do something like red, and I'll hit OK, and
| | 02:46 | then I'll just come up into my tools, and I'll
grab the paint bucket tool, and I'll just click
| | 02:50 | one time to fill the background with red,
and so you can see that the red shows through
| | 02:55 | everywhere but where the dog is, because the
dog is obviously the part of the image that
| | 02:59 | is been masked here.
| | 03:01 | And so if I go back up to the Layers, I'll
select the Dog Mask layer, go back to
| | 03:05 | the Layer > Mask, and choose Disable.
| | 03:08 | You'll notice the red goes away,
because I've temporarily turned off the mask.
| | 03:13 | Going back on and turning it back on
brings the red background right back.
| | 03:19 | So in essence, what I want you to think about is
keeping the overall integrity of the image in place.
| | 03:25 | I haven't destroyed this image of the dog;
that black background is still there in case
| | 03:29 | I need it, but I have temporarily hidden that by
using a layer mask, and that's what you want to do.
| | 03:35 | We want to practice something called non-destructive
editing, because you never know when you're
| | 03:40 | going to need that full image again.
| | 03:42 | You might need the picture of this dog for
another project, and if you've just deleted
| | 03:47 | the background, you won't be able to get
that back very quickly, or very easily.
| | 03:50 | With the layer mask, all you have to do is
just get rid of the mask, or temporarily disable
| | 03:54 | it, and you're right back to
the original photo that you had.
| | 03:58 | So by practicing this non-destructive editing
technique by using layer masks, we ensure that
| | 04:03 | we maintain the integrity of the original
file, while still being able to manipulate
| | 04:08 | it in any way we see fit.
| | 04:10 | Now, one of the great things about layer
masks is the fact that they're editable, and I'm
| | 04:15 | going to be going through how to edit a layer
mask a little bit later in this chapter, but
| | 04:20 | just know that it's as simple as making a
brush stroke on the canvas, and that is a very,
| | 04:25 | very powerful thing.
| | 04:27 | So masking enables you to hide certain pieces
of your artwork by using just an overlay and
| | 04:33 | some painting tools.
| | 04:35 | Now that's pretty cool.
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| Creating a layer mask| 00:00 | Alright, so in the previous movie, we talked about
what a layer mask is, and why it's a good thing.
| | 00:05 | In this movie, I'm going to be explaining how
to create a layer mask here inside of GIMP.
| | 00:10 | And so basically what I've got here is I've
got a picture of the dog on top of this red
| | 00:14 | background, and what I want to do is
silhouette the dog onto this background.
| | 00:17 | In order to do that, I'm going to use a combination
of tools, the first of which is going to be
| | 00:22 | the Fuzzy Select Tool.
| | 00:23 | If you're not up to speed on the Fuzzy Select Tool, you
can go back in this chapter, and watch the movie on that.
| | 00:28 | And so what I'm going to do is I'm going
to make sure I've got Feathered edges set up;
| | 00:31 | a Radius of 10 pixels, Threshold of 15,
and I'm simply going to click out here in the
| | 00:36 | black area around the dog
to make sure it's selected.
| | 00:39 | You want to make sure you're working on the Dog Mask
layer as well, otherwise this is not going to work.
| | 00:43 | And so once I have that done, I want to invert that
selection, so I'm going to go to Select > Invert,
| | 00:48 | and that's only going to select the dog.
| | 00:50 | And now I'm ready to apply the layer mask.
| | 00:52 | So, in order to apply a layer mask, I just go up
to Layer, go down to Mask, and choose Add Layer Mask.
| | 00:59 | And once I do that, I get the Add Layer
Mask dialog box, which allows me to add a layer
| | 01:03 | mask, and I have the ability to
initialize the layer mask to specific things.
| | 01:09 | Now, the easiest way to do this is to make
a selection, and then just choose Selection
| | 01:13 | from this, but you could also choose it from
White, Black, Layer's alpha channel, Transfer
| | 01:18 | layer's alpha channel, Grayscale copy of the
layer, or even a Channel inside of the layer itself.
| | 01:23 | So if I pick Channel here, I'll get a dropdown
of one of the channels that I could
| | 01:27 | then select. But I don't have any
channels saved in this document;
| | 01:30 | there is no alpha channels in here, or anything
else, so the easiest way to do this is to
| | 01:34 | use a selection. And so once I have this done,
and I choose Selection from this menu, I hit
| | 01:40 | Add, and you should see the background of
this automatically disappear, the red should
| | 01:46 | show through, and the dog
should be left right there.
| | 01:49 | If I choose Select, and then go to None, I
can then turn off the marching ants, and you
| | 01:54 | can actually see it.
| | 01:55 | And so once I have that applied, the layer
mask is now in place, and I'm able to edit
| | 02:00 | this layer mask at any time.
| | 02:01 | I'm also able to turn it off, turn
it on; do whatever I want with it.
| | 02:05 | In order to gain control of it, you'll need
to go up to the Layer menu, and go down to
| | 02:08 | Mask, and then you can choose things like Show
Layer Mask, which will show you the layer
| | 02:14 | mask in its channel representation, which basically
just means, okay, where I'm showing stuff is
| | 02:19 | going to be white; where I'm
hiding stuff is going to be black.
| | 02:21 | You can go up to the Layer and Mask menus
again, and turn that back off, and that brings
| | 02:26 | you right back to the normal view.
| | 02:28 | If you want to temporarily disable the layer
mask, you can go up to Layer, choose Mask,
| | 02:32 | and go to Disable Layer Mask. There we go.
| | 02:36 | And it just turns it off temporarily.
| | 02:38 | You'll notice it's still there in the Layers panel,
but it now has a red box around it. indicating
| | 02:43 | that it has temporarily been disabled.
| | 02:46 | In order to turn that back on, I simply
go back up to Layer, choose Mask again, and
| | 02:50 | uncheck Disable Layer Mask, and you
should see it come right back on to the image.
| | 02:55 | So in essence, creating a layer mask here
inside of GIMP is actually a fairly easy process,
| | 03:00 | but refining the mask, and getting it exactly
like you want it to is sort of the challenge
| | 03:06 | that we face, and that's something
I'm going to address in a future movie.
| | 03:10 | But just know that once you've applied a layer
mask, nothing is permanent. You can always go
| | 03:13 | in and tweak and change
any part of it that you want.
| | 03:17 | It's never final until you say it's final.
| | 03:20 | And as I said with selections, the
same holds true with masking as well:
| | 03:23 | it's never really finished; you just
get to a point where you can tolerate it.
| | 03:26 |
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| Modifying a layer mask| 00:00 | Once you have a layer mask in place on your
images here inside of GIMP, you may find the
| | 00:04 | need to refine those selections,
| | 00:06 | and so in this movie, I am going to show you
how to modify a layer mask, so that you can
| | 00:10 | either add or subtract things away from
your layer mask that you're working with.
| | 00:15 | Now, in this case, the layer mask is actually
pretty good on this dog, but I might actually
| | 00:19 | want to try and get rid of some of this darker
area that goes around the outside of his face.
| | 00:24 | And so in order to do that, I need to modify
the layer mask. So, in order to do that,
| | 00:29 | I am going to zoom out
just a little bit on the do that,
| | 00:31 | and so in order to do that, I
will just press the Minus key.
| | 00:34 | And I want to take a look
at all the area around there.
| | 00:36 | So maybe right around here, along the back,
and just different areas where I want to get
| | 00:40 | rid of some of that area where it feathered
into the dark background, right? That's what
| | 00:43 | I want to get rid of to make it a little bit
more natural for him to be on this white background.
| | 00:47 | In order to do this, the first thing I need
to do is make sure I am working on the layer
| | 00:50 | with the mask, then go up to the Layer menu, go
down to Mask, and I'm going to choose Show Layer Mask.
| | 00:57 | And so once I do that, now I can see this in its
entirety, and I can see exactly what's going on with it.
| | 01:03 | And so with this, I'm able to actually
modify the layer mask from this area right here.
| | 01:08 | If I go and I grab my brush tool right over
here, I can come out into my window, and I can
| | 01:12 | actually make changes to
the layer mask right here.
| | 01:15 | I need to make sure that I'm working with black and
white as my foreground and background colors, though,
| | 01:19 | so what I am going to do is just tap right here
to make sure they default back to black and white.
| | 01:25 | Anytime I want to add to the area
that I'm hiding, I paint with black.
| | 01:28 | So let's say I wanted to make a streak
going right through the middle here.
| | 01:31 | Just paint, just like that, just click, and
I'll make another one right here through his nose.
| | 01:36 | Okay, now if I go to Layer > Mask, and choose
Show Layer Mask again; watch what happens.
| | 01:42 | Notice I have got some stripes
going through the dog's face.
| | 01:45 | Now, I can easily fix those by going back, and
undoing that with Command+Z or Control+Z, or I
| | 01:51 | can simply brush them out with white.
| | 01:53 | So watch this; I will flip-flop my
colors by toggling this little arrow,
| | 01:58 | and then, with white as my foreground color,
I will come out here, and I will just paint
| | 02:02 | back in the areas of the dog that were
affected by that little mistake that I made.
| | 02:07 | So you see I am able to just brush
right back in along the contour of the dog.
| | 02:16 | Same thing here; I will just brush this out.
| | 02:18 | If I wanted to get a little bit more creative
with that, I could up the size of the brush
| | 02:24 | just a little. So let's up the size;
actually, I will just drag this slider here.
| | 02:27 | There we go. Make it a
little bit bigger, here we go,
| | 02:31 | and brush that in as
close as we can to the edge.
| | 02:36 | And it's okay if you don't get right on the edge.
That's all right. We can always go back in and fix that.
| | 02:40 | And then let's brush back in his nose.
| | 02:45 | Something kind of like that. There we go.
| | 02:49 | And so now if I want to get down here close,
I will just zoom in; Shift+Plus a few times, and
| | 02:54 | I'll actually adjust the size
of the brush down quite a bit.
| | 02:59 | So let's just drag that down, something like this, and
we can get in here, and really do some fine detail work.
| | 03:08 | Now, I mentioned earlier, I wanted to remove some of
the black border around the outside of the dog, right?
| | 03:14 | Well, in order to do that, what I am going
to do is work with a pretty small brush. I'm
| | 03:17 | also going to make sure that I'm working
with a soft edged brush, so right over here, you
| | 03:22 | want to click right here,
and choose a soft edge brush.
| | 03:24 | You could also choose this
small soft edge brush here,
| | 03:27 | and that makes it a little bit easier to do.
| | 03:29 | And so once I pick a soft edge brush, I'm also
going to flip-flop my colors again from white
| | 03:35 | to black. That way I am hiding something now.
| | 03:38 | And now I will just come out here, and I'll
start brushing around the edges, and you just
| | 03:41 | need to be careful not to
brush along any of the dog's fur.
| | 03:46 | And you can see as I'm doing this,
I am kind of lightening that a bit.
| | 03:53 | And I will go over it again. See? I am just
kind of taking out that area around the dog.
| | 04:03 | I am just brushing around,
just gently brushing around;
| | 04:06 | not getting too close. Using that soft edge
brush allows it to be a much softer transition.
| | 04:11 | If I want to pan around, I can do that with
my spacebar key, and then just move my mouse
| | 04:17 | wherever I want it to go while I
am holding down the spacebar key.
| | 04:21 | So, very gradual process. This is the tedious
part of layer masking that you're going to run into.
| | 04:26 | It's not the most fun thing in the world,
but when you're making composites, and doing
| | 04:31 | serious work, nothing ever
worth doing isn't hard. There we go.
| | 04:40 | I will just finish up this last little
part here, and then we will zoom back out to
| | 04:45 | kind of see what I've done.
| | 04:47 | Just go along here. Here is a piece where I
kind of missed awhile ago, so what I am going
| | 04:51 | to do is flip-flop my colors back,
| | 04:55 | and I will just brush this area back in. You will
notice some of the dog comes back in right there.
| | 05:00 | If I make a mistake, like I did there, that's
okay; I can fix that by flip-flopping again.
| | 05:06 | And once I flip-flop there, just kind of
brush out that little dark spot that I caused.
| | 05:12 | Alright, now let's zoom back out.
| | 05:15 | And you can see, compared to the areas
where that black border still exists around the
| | 05:19 | outside of the dog, this area actually looks a little bit
more natural, like he might actually be standing there.
| | 05:25 | So what I could do is go around the edge of
this dog painting with black, using that soft
| | 05:29 | edged brush, and I could actually hide more of
that dark border to make it a better transition
| | 05:34 | into the background.
| | 05:36 | So when you first make your selection, no matter
how good that selection is, you're always going
| | 05:40 | to have to refine it, and this is how you
refine it. You add a layer mask to it, and then you
| | 05:45 | use the brush tools to really get in there
close, and make those pixel level adjustments.
| | 05:51 | Getting very close and doing
that is really going to be helpful.
| | 05:54 | So again, just zoom in anywhere you want on
this image, and then with your brush, just start
| | 06:01 | painting away some of those areas, and you'll
be amazed at how much better your images start
| | 06:09 | to look when you go in and
actually take the time to do this.
| | 06:14 | And I am just doing this very quickly; you would
obviously spend a little bit more time on it than I did,
| | 06:18 | but check that out compared to how we were
before. If I go up to the File menu, and choose
| | 06:23 | Revert, there you see what it looked like before.
| | 06:29 | So I did some significant changes to the
neckline of the dog before, and I'm very happy with
| | 06:34 | what I was able to do with that.
| | 06:36 | So again, anytime you want to work on an
image that has a layer mask on it, just make sure
| | 06:40 | you remember the principle that black conceals,
white reveals, use your brush tool, and really
| | 06:46 | zoom in to the area you're working on, and
you can really get control of those small
| | 06:51 | minute details, and really make
your selections that much better.
| | 06:55 |
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|
|
4. Manipulating ImagesRotating images| 00:00 | When it comes to rotating images, there are
two basic ways to do this here inside of GIMP,
| | 00:05 | one of which is on an overall image command level,
and then also on a layer by layer level as well,
| | 00:10 | and so I am going to cover
both of those in this movie.
| | 00:13 | In order to rotate the entire image, meaning
everything inside of the contents of the document
| | 00:17 | you're working on, you can go to the Image
menu, and then you can go down to Transform,
| | 00:22 | and you have the ability to rotate either 90°
clockwise, 90° counterclockwise, or rotate 180°.
| | 00:29 | If you selected one of these, it would automatically
rotate the image in the direction that you specified.
| | 00:33 | If you want to go back, just Edit > Undo
Rotate Image, and it will bring it right back.
| | 00:38 | Now, one of the interesting things here is
that you don't get the ability to rotate on
| | 00:42 | arbitrary level. You can't just rotate based on a
certain degree. You have to go in 90° increments.
| | 00:48 | However, you can get around this by using
the Rotate Tool, and so what you can do now
| | 00:53 | is just go grab the Rotate Tool, and with the
Rotate Tool selected, you can actually click
| | 00:59 | out in the canvas, and start to rotate
the object around inside of the window.
| | 01:05 | And so here, I really want to adjust this horizon
line. I want this line that goes across here,
| | 01:09 | I want it to be straight.
| | 01:11 | So in order to do that, I am just going
to come out here, and sort of straighten it up.
| | 01:16 | Now, once I get that to a point where I think it's
straight, I can then go ahead and I can hit Rotate.
| | 01:22 | Now, once I do that, it's going to apply those
changes to the image, and you're going to see
| | 01:26 | that happen. There you see it rotates over, so I
have essentially corrected the horizon line here.
| | 01:32 | And once I get that, everything seems to be
fine, except for one fact: the fact that I
| | 01:37 | have these transparent areas around the outside,
| | 01:40 | and that's something that we can address
through cropping a little bit later on.
| | 01:43 | But one other thing that you need to understand
is, if I had multiple layers in this document,
| | 01:48 | they would not have been affected by this.
| | 01:50 | The only thing that's affected when you're
using the Rotate Tool is the layer on which
| | 01:54 | you are currently working, unless of
course those layers have been linked together.
| | 01:59 | And if you want to learn more about linking
layers together, you can go back and watch
| | 02:02 | that movie in one of the previous chapters.
| | 02:04 | However, most of the time, if we don't want
to rotate the entire image either 90° or
| | 02:09 | what have you, we are going to use the Rotate
Tool for these small, minute rotations, and we
| | 02:13 | are going to do that on a layer by layer basis.
| | 02:16 | So again, you can rotate an entire image by
going up to the Image menu, choosing Transform,
| | 02:20 | and then selecting Rotate, or you can simply
grab the rotation tool, come out, and arbitrarily
| | 02:25 | rotate this by clicking with your mouse.
You can also control the Rotate Tool from here
| | 02:29 | in the tool options if you see fit.
| | 02:32 | This is a great way to start fixing
basic image flaws, like this crooked horizon line
| | 02:37 | here in this photo, and then you can take it
one step further by applying some creative
| | 02:42 | cropping as well.
| | 02:43 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Cropping images| 00:00 | Another key way to manipulate an image is
to crop the image. This can change the way
| | 00:04 | the image looks, the way it feels, the overall
orientation of the image, and also correct
| | 00:09 | some image flaws as well.
| | 00:11 | In this movie, I am going to be showing you how to
crop an image here inside of GIMP using the Crop Tool.
| | 00:16 | Now, I have already got an image here onscreen,
| | 00:18 | and this image is one that I've arbitrarily
rotated to correct a crooked horizon line
| | 00:22 | that went across the middle,
| | 00:23 | and so what I want to do now is crop out
the transparent areas that you see around the
| | 00:28 | image on the outside.
| | 00:29 | In order to do that, I am going to grab the Crop
Tool; it looks like a little X-Acto knife over here.
| | 00:34 | And so once I do that, I'm not able to just
come out here and start drawing out a crop.
| | 00:38 | And the easiest way to do this would be
to start right up here in the top right,
| | 00:42 | and I'll just crop something kind of like this.
| | 00:45 | Draw it out. I'm careful to stay inside the
lines of the transparent areas that I don't
| | 00:52 | want in the photo anymore.
| | 00:55 | And I can always adjust the crop after the
fact. See here, I can just come up here and
| | 00:59 | raise this line here. I can come over here and
push this line a little further to the right.
| | 01:04 | I just want to crop the areas that are transparent. I
don't want to cause too much damage to the overall image.
| | 01:09 | And so once I get it exactly like I want it, in
position like that, I'm pretty much ready to go.
| | 01:16 | You can press Enter or Return on your keyboard
to commit to your change, and once you do that,
| | 01:21 | the image has been cropped. As you can see, the
transparent areas around the outside are gone.
| | 01:26 | If I Undo that with Command+Z or Control+Z; you
can see they pop right back in. I will redo
| | 01:30 | that with Command+Y or
Control+Y, and just like that.
| | 01:34 | Now, it doesn't just apply to just simple crops
like that. You can also use the tool options
| | 01:39 | over here on the outside.
| | 01:41 | So you can say that you're only going to crop
this current layer. You can allow growing;
| | 01:46 | that's an interesting thing to extend the
canvas of the object that you're working on.
| | 01:50 | You can also expand it from the center.
You can choose to have it do a fixed crop.
| | 01:54 | So for instance, if I choose a Fixed crop here,
and Aspect ratio of, let's say, the height here,
| | 02:00 | I want the height to be no more than, oh,
let's do something way up there, like 475 pixels.
| | 02:11 | So once I do that, I could come out here, and you
see here that it's constrained to 475 pixels tall.
| | 02:18 | So I can go as wide as I want, but I
can't go any higher than 475 pixels.
| | 02:23 | If you make a crop like that, like I just did,
and you don't want it, you can just hit Escape,
| | 02:27 | and it will automatically cancel it.
| | 02:28 | Then you can come back over here and
uncheck the Fixed box, if you want to,
| | 02:33 | and that enables you to do a free crop again.
| | 02:36 | You can also set up whether or not you
want guides, like center lines, rule of thirds,
| | 02:40 | rule the fifths, golden sections, diagonal lines.
| | 02:43 | Let's say I want to do the rule of thirds.
I'll come out here, and let's just say I want
| | 02:47 | to do a tighter crop on the images out
there. There's my rule of thirds grid,
| | 02:52 | and so you want to put your points of emphasis
in a crossroads of one of the things there.
| | 03:00 | So let's take this here, and let's move it
up a little bit. Maybe move it over to the
| | 03:04 | right. I want this to be kind of at a crossroads,
and this right here to be at a crossroads too.
| | 03:09 | And so once I do that, if I want to commit
to that crop, just hit Enter, and there we go.
| | 03:12 | Completely different crop. You can see this
is almost a completely different looking image now.
| | 03:16 | If I go, here is before, and after; just by
applying that crop, I sort of changed the look
| | 03:22 | and feel of this image. I changed, the depth
of the image, I also changed the layout of
| | 03:26 | the image, almost the
orientation is different as well.
| | 03:29 | So it's pretty neat to think what
you can do simply by cropping an image.
| | 03:33 | Let's go back in and check this Allow
growing feature, and show you how that works.
| | 03:36 | If I were to make a selection now around
this document, and I extend the crop outside of
| | 03:43 | the document just a little bit --
| | 03:44 | let's extend it by about that
much, and about that much there.
| | 03:47 | Then let's move it, so that it's relatively the
same on all sides; something kind of like this.
| | 03:55 | If I hit Enter here, you notice the canvas
size actually grows outside of that image.
| | 04:02 | And so now what I could do is just throw a new
layer into the mix. Let's fill that with white, hit OK,
| | 04:09 | and I'll drag that layer behind this layer.
| | 04:13 | And look what I've done here? I've actually
added almost like a matte effect, or Polaroid
| | 04:18 | like effect to the image
simply by using the Crop Tool.
| | 04:22 | And so there are a lot of different things
that you can do with this crop command, so
| | 04:26 | I suggest that you take some time, learn
the ins and outs of how to use it, and then
| | 04:31 | go into some of your images -- even the ones that
you might've thought before weren't as good;
| | 04:35 | you might want to throw them away -- you can
actually change their entire look and feel just by
| | 04:40 | using the Crop Tool, and you might find some
keepers in what you otherwise thought were throwaways.
| | 04:45 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using auto adjustments| 00:00 | Before we get into manually adjusting different
parts of this image using pretty advanced
| | 00:05 | tools, like levels, and curves, it should be
pointed out that there are several automatic
| | 00:09 | adjustments that exist inside of GIMP that
make it easy to perform very quick edits to
| | 00:14 | your photographs that really can enhance and
improve the overall quality of the photographs
| | 00:19 | that you are working with.
| | 00:20 | In this movie, I am going to
exploring some of those auto adjustments now.
| | 00:23 | So I have got a file open here, and I'm just
going to go up to the Colors menu, and when
| | 00:27 | I go up to the Colors menu, you
will notice there is an Auto option,
| | 00:30 | and there are several
different options available to us,
| | 00:32 | the first of which is
something called Equalize.
| | 00:35 | And so Equalize is an adjustment that tries
to spread the colors in the image evenly across
| | 00:40 | the range of the possible intensities.
| | 00:43 | Now, according to GIMP's Web site, this says
that in some cases it can affect the photo
| | 00:48 | in an amazing way, bringing out contrasts that
are very difficult to see, but more commonly,
| | 00:53 | it says it just makes the image look weird,
| | 00:56 | and I totally agree. So if you were to choose
Equalize, you get kind of this weird looking
| | 01:00 | effect on the image. In some cases,
it's a pretty decent special effect,
| | 01:05 | and if it's what you're going for, fantastic,
but if you're trying to actually correct the
| | 01:09 | colors, or make colors look better,
I don't think this is the way to go.
| | 01:12 | So again, just go back up to the Edit menu,
and choose Undo Equalize, or hit Command+Z
| | 01:17 | or Control+Z on your keyboard to do that.
| | 01:19 | If we go back to Colors > Auto, and find the
next one, it's called White Balance, and so
| | 01:25 | the White Balance command basically tries
to enhance the images that have poor white
| | 01:31 | or blacks by removing the little used colors, and
stretching the remaining range as much as possible.
| | 01:38 | And so basically what this is going to try
to do is remove the unnecessaries, and kind of
| | 01:41 | pump up the contrast little bit, and make the
white balance seem a little bit more natural.
| | 01:45 | And so if I hit White Balance, you will see
that the blues become bluer, the whites become
| | 01:50 | whiter; it's kind of like
the old detergent commercials.
| | 01:53 | But it does make the photo look a little bit
better. If I show you here is before, and after,
| | 01:57 | it actually makes the colors pop, and
adds a nice little bit of contrast.
| | 02:01 | So if that's what we were going for here,
since this image was kind of flat, that automatic
| | 02:05 | White Balance adjustment
is actually pretty good.
| | 02:08 | Now again, to undo that, just
Command+Z or Control+Z on your keyboard.
| | 02:11 | Now let's go back up here to the Colors menu,
and let's choose Auto, and let's go down here
| | 02:15 | and find the next one. The
next one is called Color Enhance,
| | 02:18 | and this is a command that increases the saturation
range of the colors that exist in the current
| | 02:22 | layer you are working on without altering
the brightness or the hue of those colors.
| | 02:28 | So basically this command just enhances the
colors that are already there without actually
| | 02:33 | changing them in anyway.
| | 02:35 | It should be noted that Color Enhance does
not work on black and white images, as there
| | 02:38 | is no color information
in a black and white image.
| | 02:41 | So in this, if I like click this, you are going
to see that the blue gets a little bit richer
| | 02:46 | in the water back here; his little boogie
board got a little bit brighter. Here is before,
| | 02:52 | and here's after, so you can see it just kind
of deepens the colors a little bit. It doesn't
| | 02:56 | change how bright or how dark they are, it
does not alter the hue of the color in anyway;
| | 03:01 | just makes them pop a little bit more.
| | 03:03 | So let's undo that, and let's go back up
here to Colors, and go back down to Auto, and
| | 03:08 | let's go down and find Normalize.
| | 03:10 | And so Normalize is basically a tool that's great
for underexposed images; images that are a little dark.
| | 03:17 | It adjust the whole image uniformly until
the brightest point is right at its saturation
| | 03:22 | limit, and the darkest
point is at complete black.
| | 03:26 | The downside is that the amount of brightening
is determined entirely by the lightest and
| | 03:31 | darkest points in the image,
| | 03:33 | so even one single white pixel or one single black
pixel will make normalization pretty much ineffective.
| | 03:39 | So if we click this, you are not going to see
a whole lot happen here, because there's
| | 03:43 | already some pixels in
here that are already white.
| | 03:45 | However, if there wasn't anything in this
image that was completely white, or completely
| | 03:48 | black, it would automatically adjust to set
the points to completely white, and completely
| | 03:54 | black, and it would then pop up the contrast a
little bit, and make this image look a little better.
| | 03:58 | So that one really doesn't
do a whole lot of this image,
| | 04:00 | but for underexposed images that don't have
a whole lot of shadow and highlight detail,
| | 04:04 | that is a great thing to try on those.
| | 04:07 | Alright, one more. Let's go back up to
Colors, go down to Auto, and Stretch Contrast.
| | 04:11 | Basically this is a lot like Normalize,
except for the fact that it operates on the
| | 04:15 | red, green, and blue channels
independently of one another.
| | 04:19 | And it's often useful for an
effect in reducing color casts.
| | 04:23 | So if you have an image that is severely contaminated
with a certain color, this can oftentimes help that.
| | 04:29 | And so let's go in right now and press this,
and you are going to notice a little bit of
| | 04:33 | a change; not much. Here is before, and here
is after, so it just kind of helped along some
| | 04:38 | of the colors. Actually, some of the blue
contamination around the boy got taken care of, but for
| | 04:42 | the most part, not very much
happening on this particular photo there.
| | 04:46 | Alright, let's go in one last time. Colors > Auto >
Stretch HSV. This does the same thing as Stretch Contrast,
| | 04:55 | but it works in the HSV color space, rather
than RGB. So Hue, Saturation, and Vibrance,
| | 05:01 | versus Red, Green, and Blue.
| | 05:03 | And it is made to preserve the hues in the
image, so the color should not stretch at all.
| | 05:09 | So here's the before, and here's the after.
You can see that actually kind of darkens
| | 05:13 | and muddies them up a little bit, so
I actually don't like that at all.
| | 05:16 | Alright, there is one final auto adjustment,
and it's not located in the Colors menu. It's
| | 05:22 | actually located in the Tools menu.
| | 05:24 | This is sort of a hidden gem
of the auto world inside GIMP.
| | 05:27 | So if you go to Tools, you go into
Color Tools, and select Levels, it's going
| | 05:32 | to bring up the Levels dialog box, which we
are going to talk about in-depth a little
| | 05:35 | bit later on, but in the levels dialog box,
there is an Auto button, and this thing is
| | 05:40 | actually pretty good.
| | 05:42 | So if I hit the Auto button,
watch what happens to the photo.
| | 05:45 | Instantly pops the colors, fixes what it
can fix; it does a pretty decent job of it.
| | 05:51 | I would argue that it is a little heavy sometimes
on the cool side, especially if there are already
| | 05:55 | some cool tones in the image. I would argue
that it's sort of overexaggerates whatever
| | 05:59 | the overall tone of the image is,
| | 06:01 | but in most cases it works pretty darn good.
| | 06:04 | And if I hit OK, then it commits to that change,
and I can show here is before, and after. I
| | 06:10 | actually like the after considerably
more than I did the original photo.
| | 06:15 | So again, that's the Auto levels command located
inside of the Tools menu, inside of Color Tools,
| | 06:19 | and then in the Levels dialog box.
| | 06:22 | So hopefully by now you have a better understanding
of what each one of these Auto adjustments
| | 06:27 | are, and what they do, and how they can
affect your images here inside of GIMP,
| | 06:31 | and hopefully this gives you a better starting off
point for your next photo retouching project as well.
| | 06:36 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adjusting images with Levels| 00:00 | When it comes to color correcting images, you
can either use the auto adjustments that are
| | 00:04 | available to you inside of GIMP, and hope
for the best, or you can use one of the manual
| | 00:09 | tools, like levels, and curves, and really
dial in the specifics of your color correction.
| | 00:14 | That's what we are going to be doing in this
movie: how to use the levels command to enhance
| | 00:18 | the tonal values inside of an image,
and make it look a little bit better.
| | 00:22 | So in this case, this image is a
little underexposed, and a little flat,
| | 00:25 | so what I want to do is sort of boost that
a little bit, and bump up the contrast, and
| | 00:28 | I am going to use the levels
command in order to do that.
| | 00:31 | You want to go up to the Tools menu, and go
down to Color Tools, so you can bring up Levels.
| | 00:35 | Inside of the Levels dialog box, you have a
lot of different controls available to you.
| | 00:39 | So, if you had any presets available, they would
be listed here; I don't. You can always save
| | 00:43 | levels adjustments that you make inside of
here as a favorite, but as each image is different,
| | 00:47 | I don't see that as being a necessary thing you
are going to have to do, or we even want to do.
| | 00:52 | In this case, though, you can also choose the
value of the channel that you're working on;
| | 00:56 | either Red, Green, or Blue, or you can work
on all of them at one time, and you can also
| | 01:00 | reset the channel to its default.
| | 01:02 | You get a big display of your histogram here,
as well as controls for your shadow, midtone,
| | 01:07 | and highlight controls.
| | 01:08 | We'll talk about those in a minute.
| | 01:09 | You can also control your Output Levels. As
you can see dragging this to the right sort
| | 01:13 | of lightens up the image, and
dragging this to the left darkens the image.
| | 01:18 | You also have the Auto levels command,
which we discussed in a previous movie, and then
| | 01:22 | you have your eyedropper
controls right down here at the bottom.
| | 01:26 | The eyedropper controls allow you to set your
black point, your gray point, and your white point.
| | 01:31 | If you were to select the white point, and
then go out in your image and try to find
| | 01:34 | an area that you perceive to be white, and you
click on that, you might be surprised at exactly
| | 01:40 | what happens there,
| | 01:41 | so you've got to be careful with those. Let's reset
that back to normal just by clicking the Reset button.
| | 01:46 | The biggest area that you need to worry
about here is the Input Levels right here.
| | 01:51 | So basically what these allow you to do is
take these sliders, and adjust either the black
| | 01:55 | point, the gray point, or the highlight
point or the white point, of the image.
| | 01:59 | So what you want to do here is just for this
image, I want to increase the contrast a little bit,
| | 02:02 | so I am going to darken the shadows just a
little; maybe something like 15 would work.
| | 02:09 | I also want to make the
highlights pop a little more,
| | 02:14 | so we are going to kind
of move that to the left;
| | 02:16 | maybe something like 230.
| | 02:19 | Then we can adjust the midpoint if I
think it's too light. I don't think so.
| | 02:22 | I think it needs to be a little brighter
than that, and maybe that even makes it a little
| | 02:27 | bit easier for me to adjust the shadows; something
to about 20, and this is like a game that you
| | 02:32 | are playing right here. A game of tug-of-war with
the sliders, trying to decide what exactly looks best.
| | 02:39 | The darker actually works well.
| | 02:41 | So there we have 21, 0.98,
| | 02:43 | I might actually take that
back up to just 1, and then 232.
| | 02:49 | So basically what I've done here is I
have said, okay, anything that was at --
| | 02:52 | basically, you are dealing
with levels of gray across here, right?
| | 02:55 | At the very far left, you are dealing with
complete black; at the very far right, you
| | 02:59 | are dealing with complete white.
| | 03:01 | So what I have basically said is, because black is 0,
Y is 255, when you are talking about shades of gray.
| | 03:08 | So what I have said is, okay, everything
that is from 21 -- because you are dividing this
| | 03:13 | up in 255 shades of gray --
| | 03:15 | so everything from 21 over to 0,
I want all that to just be black.
| | 03:20 | Everything from 232 all the way up
into 255, I want that to be white.
| | 03:23 | So you are brightening up the
highlights, you are darkening up the shadows,
| | 03:26 | and then this one is just kind of in the middle
where you are saying, okay, the gamma value,
| | 03:29 | or how bright or how light
it is is determined here,
| | 03:32 | so you can adjust that accordingly.
| | 03:34 | So the higher this goes, the brighter the
image. The lower it goes, the darker the image.
| | 03:38 | So I am pretty happy with
these results: 21, 1, and 232.
| | 03:42 | If I hit OK, and then show you here is
before; sort of muddy, light, no contrast.
| | 03:48 | And here's after a quick levels adjustment.
| | 03:51 | Now, the one thing that you don't get with
Levels is a fine level of control over individual
| | 03:58 | values of color, whereas in something like
Curves, you actually have a massive amount
| | 04:03 | of control over the entire histogram.
| | 04:05 | Here inside of Levels, you get to control
three points: a black, a white, and a gray point.
| | 04:10 | That's it.
| | 04:10 | That's all you get.
| | 04:11 | And that's what you just saw me
adjust right there in that dialog box.
| | 04:14 | I adjusted the black point, I adjusted the
white point, then I adjusted the midpoint,
| | 04:18 | and once I did that, I was able to get a decent fix on
this image, but it's not exactly where I needed to go.
| | 04:23 | I am losing detail down here in his shorts.
Also some shadow detail right here. Definitely
| | 04:28 | clipping out some highlights in
the water as it's crashing over,
| | 04:32 | so that's one of the main points that I
have against levels is the fact that it causes
| | 04:37 | some clipping issues, because you are
actually telling this to essentially clip out parts
| | 04:42 | of your image in order to increase or decrease the
contrast, and that's not something you want to do.
| | 04:47 | We want images to look really good, yet still
maintain all of the level of detail that they
| | 04:52 | need, and unfortunately with
levels, that's very hard to maintain.
| | 04:56 | So this is good for quick
adjustments with a decent level of control.
| | 04:59 | It certainly gives you more control than an
auto adjustment, but it's by no means as complex
| | 05:04 | as something, say, like curves.
| | 05:06 | That's something we are going to dive into
in a later movie is how to gain even more
| | 05:10 | control over the tonality of your
images using something like curves.
| | 05:14 | Hopefully by now you have a better understanding
of what the levels command is, and how it works;
| | 05:18 | how you can adjust all of the different
tonal values inside of your image to make it the
| | 05:23 | best composition possible.
| | 05:24 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adjusting images with Curves| 00:00 | There will come a time as you're working on
images inside of GIMP, or any other image editing
| | 00:04 | application, that you're ready to graduate
from the basic image adjustment tools, like
| | 00:10 | levels, because you want that fine level of control
over your image, and all of the different aspects of it.
| | 00:17 | So, when you are ready to graduate, you
want to move up to something like curves.
| | 00:21 | Curves gives you an unbelievable amount of
control over the entire spectrum of colors
| | 00:26 | in your image, and it allows you to adjust
the tonality, and look and feel of your image
| | 00:30 | in ways you probably never thought possible.
| | 00:33 | However, most people shy away from the curves
dialog box, because when they open it up, they
| | 00:37 | simply don't know what to do with it, and
nobody really explains it that writes this
| | 00:41 | software. They don't give you any type of dialog
boxes that say, hey, this is how this thing works.
| | 00:45 | You just open it up, and you are
supposed to know how to do it.
| | 00:48 | Unfortunately, it's not
that easy to figure out.
| | 00:51 | So in this movie, hopefully by the end,
you'll have a better understanding of this tool,
| | 00:55 | how it works, and how you can use it to correct
certain things that are going on in your image.
| | 00:59 | So let's go up to the Tools menu first, and
let's go down to Color Tools, and bring up Curves.
| | 01:03 | When you first bring it up, it's sort of
daunting. It's got this big histogram in the middle,
| | 01:07 | a line going through it, and a bunch of
gradients going horizontally and vertically, and not
| | 01:12 | really any explanation as to
why any of this is happening.
| | 01:15 | I'll move this over to the left, so we can see
what's going on inside of the photo at the same time.
| | 01:20 | One of the best explanations I ever heard
about the Curves dialog box came from a man
| | 01:24 | named Ben Willmore, a very well-respected
teacher and photographer, and Ben described
| | 01:30 | the Curves dialog box as being nothing
more than a bank of the dimmer switches.
| | 01:35 | And I found that to be an amazing analogy,
because if you can work a dimmer switch, essentially
| | 01:41 | Ben says that you can work the
Curves dialog box, and that's exactly true,
| | 01:45 | because Curves is essentially nothing more
than a bunch of light switches that you're
| | 01:49 | controlling how much light is
entering in at any point in your image.
| | 01:54 | So if you think about your image as, like, a
wall, or an office space that has a bunch of
| | 01:59 | dimmer switches on the wall, you can control
the lighting in each individual room in that
| | 02:03 | office by changing one of the
dimmer switches, right?
| | 02:06 | That's exactly what you can do
inside of this image as well.
| | 02:10 | So if you think about the dark to light values that
go across the bottom here, these are all from 0 to 255;
| | 02:17 | these are all different
rooms that exist in your image.
| | 02:21 | For each one of those rooms, you have the
ability to set a point along this curve in order to
| | 02:26 | control the lightness or darkness of
that particular portion of your image.
| | 02:31 | So for instance, if I wanted to adjust
something in the midtones, I would come around here
| | 02:35 | to somewhere in the middle, and I
would click on that curve to add a point.
| | 02:40 | If I want to add more light to
that room, I just raise the switch.
| | 02:48 | See how the midtones are
getting lighter in my image?
| | 02:51 | If I wanted this room down here to be
darker, I set a point, and I start to drag down.
| | 02:57 | See how the shadows get darker?
| | 03:00 | Same holds true up here at the top.
| | 03:02 | If I want this point at the top to be a
little bit lighter, add a little bit more, or if
| | 03:07 | I want it darker, take it down a little bit.
| | 03:10 | See how the highlights start to get dark?
| | 03:14 | So you just add dimmer switches wherever
you see fit to lighten or darken certain parts
| | 03:21 | of your image, and you can really get an amazing
amount of control over how this image looks and feels.
| | 03:28 | So, a good curve to add some subtle
contrast would be something called an S curve.
| | 03:32 | So you want the curve to sort
of look like an S, in essence.
| | 03:37 | So in order to do that, of course, you just
fold the curve down like that, fold the curve
| | 03:42 | up like this, and that gives it a nice S
curve. Toning that down a little bit will bring
| | 03:48 | back some of the detail, bring in this down a
little bit, and bring that down more towards
| | 03:54 | the middle where it started. There we go.
| | 03:57 | You can just play around with these, adding
switches wherever you need to in order to
| | 04:01 | get control over that part of the image.
| | 04:04 | So for instance, the
midtones might look a little dark.
| | 04:06 | That's okay, just raise the dimmer switch.
| | 04:08 | Or the highlights might look a little dark.
| | 04:10 | That's okay, just raise the dimmer switch.
| | 04:12 | Or the shadows might look a little light,
| | 04:15 | so that's okay; just darken that room.
| | 04:17 | That's essentially what you're doing here
inside of Curves: setting up little light
| | 04:21 | switches all along the different rooms that
exist inside of your image, and then raising
| | 04:26 | or lowering them accordingly to get exactly the
look and feel that you want inside of the image.
| | 04:32 | Now in this case, I think I have increased the
contrast may be a little too much, and that's okay.
| | 04:35 | If you've done that, you can hit
Reset at any time, and go back to normal.
| | 04:39 | So here, maybe I will want to
raise the contrast a little bit,
| | 04:42 | so let's set a point here, and
let's drag it up a little bit.
| | 04:46 | Let's set a point here, and
let's drag it down a little bit.
| | 04:50 | Something kind of like that.
| | 04:51 | So a very subtle amount of contrast, but
still adds a little bit of pop nonetheless, and
| | 04:56 | when I hit OK, I can now see
here is before, and here is after.
| | 05:01 | A nice difference between the two.
| | 05:03 | I have got a little bit of contrast.
| | 05:04 | I might push up the
highlights a little bit more,
| | 05:06 | I might bring up the midtones a little bit
more, but overall, pretty cool. And you can
| | 05:10 | see the amount of control I have in this
image versus when I was using the Levels command
| | 05:15 | in the previous movie, where I
only had three points of control.
| | 05:18 | Now I have 255 points of control that I can
individually alter just by putting in a new
| | 05:25 | switch, raising the
lights, or dimming the lights.
| | 05:28 | That is essentially how we use the Curves command
to adjust tonality in our photos here inside of GIMP.
| | 05:34 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adjusting Hue, Saturation, and Brightness| 00:00 | Another way to adjust images is to adjust
three values known as hue, saturation, and
| | 00:05 | brightness, and these refer to the overall
tonal quality of the image, the color saturation,
| | 00:11 | and of course, the color range in
which the image has inside of it.
| | 00:14 | So in order to adjust the hue, saturation,
and brightness values inside of GIMP, you
| | 00:18 | are going to go up to the Tools menu, and
you're going to go down to Color Tools, and you are
| | 00:22 | going to select Hue-Saturation. And once
you do that, you get this big dialog box here,
| | 00:26 | and you can actually adjust all of
these values right down here at the bottom.
| | 00:31 | Now, you can work on individual color
values up here at the top, but if you want to do
| | 00:35 | an overall adjustment, which is what we are going
to be doing in this movie, this is how you do it.
| | 00:39 | So I am going to ignore Hue for just a
moment, and only focus on Lightness, and Saturation.
| | 00:44 | So they refer to Lightness; it's also sometimes referred
to brightness, but in this case, they call it Lightness.
| | 00:50 | So the first value I am actually
going to focus on is Saturation.
| | 00:53 | Saturation refers to how
intense are the colors in your image.
| | 00:56 | Right now the saturation in this
image is actually a little light.
| | 00:59 | It's not really pumped up enough. You've got
to be careful of saturation, because if you
| | 01:03 | pump it up too high, like this, things
start looking a little neon and cartoony.
| | 01:08 | So you've got to tone that down a little bit.
| | 01:10 | You can also remove saturation completely, and turn
a photograph into a black and white photo as well.
| | 01:16 | But in this case, let's hit
Reset, and go back to normal.
| | 01:19 | What you want to do is focus on the colors
that you want to pop, while at the same time
| | 01:24 | trying not to affect the colors
you want to stay in the safe zone.
| | 01:28 | The colors that you want to stay safe
are hair and skin tones, most likely.
| | 01:32 | It's okay if clothing gets a little funky,
but we don't want hair and skin to be really
| | 01:37 | sort of cartoonish in our photos.
| | 01:39 | So Saturation value here; if I start pumping
that up somewhere around 20, and then let's
| | 01:45 | turn the Preview off, and back on. You can
see that I am kind affecting the sky a little
| | 01:50 | bit, some of her shirt is getting affected,
the top of his head is a little bit; that's
| | 01:55 | okay in this case, because the sun is
reflecting directly off of his hair.
| | 01:59 | Let's push this up a little bit more,
maybe like 25, and here is before, and after.
| | 02:04 | So we are really getting a good pop in the
sky, good pop in the water, and everything
| | 02:07 | else is looking pretty good.
| | 02:08 | He is looking a little red in some areas,
| | 02:10 | so I think it's about time to stop there.
| | 02:12 | Now we also want to adjust
something called the Lightness value.
| | 02:15 | This is how light or how
dark the overall image is.
| | 02:18 | When it's set to 0, that's
as it was shot in camera.
| | 02:20 | If you push it to the right, that's going
to lighten it up, and you can see that creates
| | 02:24 | a really, really bad looking photo.
| | 02:26 | So let's set that back down.
| | 02:29 | I'll just put in a 0 right there, and that
should set that back to 0. Then you can tab
| | 02:34 | over to another place, or just
click in another box, and it will reset.
| | 02:37 | I actually think this image would look
better if we darkened it up a little bit,
| | 02:40 | so let's take that back down,
maybe to like -15.
| | 02:44 | Something like that, and let's
show you; here is before, and after.
| | 02:47 | Now, it may even go better --
let's try -20.
| | 02:51 | Before; after.
| | 02:53 | That's a pretty decent change right there.
| | 02:55 | I have saturated the sky.
| | 02:56 | It looks like a nice sunset shot.
| | 02:58 | It's a little bit darker than it was before.
| | 03:00 | I might actually even push the darkness, or
the Lightness down a little bit more to -25,
| | 03:06 | and again, here before, and after.
| | 03:08 | So can you see here you get some pretty decent
controls with the Lightness, and the Saturation,
| | 03:13 | but one thing I haven't mentioned is the Hue.
| | 03:15 | So what exactly does the Hue do?
| | 03:17 | Well, the Hue actually affects
the overall colors in the image.
| | 03:20 | So, right now it's set to 0.
| | 03:21 | If I start pressing this to the left, you
are going to notice that things get pretty
| | 03:25 | crazy pretty quick.
| | 03:28 | If you're going for a special effect, that might
be okay, but in this case, I don't think we are,
| | 03:32 | so set that back to 0.
| | 03:35 | It's okay to change the Hue maybe a
little bit to get a different look.
| | 03:38 | You can see here,
just changing it over there.
| | 03:41 | Here is before, and after.
| | 03:41 | So I have got kind of an
interesting look going on.
| | 03:45 | I would say anywhere in the -10 to +10 range
is okay in most cases for changing the overall
| | 03:52 | look and feel, maybe even the temperature
a little bit of the image, but for the most
| | 03:56 | part, you want to kind of steer away from
changing the Hue I would think. And actually -5 here
| | 04:01 | looks pretty good on that.
| | 04:03 | So my settings here are -5, -25,
and then 25 for the Saturation.
| | 04:08 | It's going to depend on the image that you're
working on, of course, and it's going to look
| | 04:11 | different each and every time.
| | 04:13 | That's why this is kind of like
a click and pick kind of thing.
| | 04:16 | You click until you find one you like, and
then you pick that one, and you stick with it.
| | 04:19 | Then once you are finished with that, you
can hit OK, and that has applied that to the
| | 04:23 | image, and if I choose Edit > Undo, you can see
there is the before, and then if I do Redo
| | 04:28 | with Command+Y or Control+Y,
there is the after.
| | 04:31 | So, some subtle adjustments.
| | 04:33 | You don't want to go overboard.
| | 04:34 | That's really easy to do in that dialog box,
but some subtle adjustments can really go
| | 04:38 | a long way when it comes to hue,
saturation, and brightness.
| | 04:42 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adjusting noisy images| 00:00 | When you are taking photographs with digital
cameras, you are often going to run into the
| | 00:03 | problem of having noise in the photos, especially
when you're taking photographs in low light
| | 00:08 | situations where you have to
crank up the ISO value of the camera.
| | 00:12 | So, a lot of times you are going to want to
get rid of this noise, because it just causes
| | 00:15 | distraction, and it doesn't look very good,
especially in dark photographs; you can really
| | 00:20 | start to see the noise
in those type of photos.
| | 00:23 | In order to get rid of the noise using this
application, GIMP, what you are going to have
| | 00:27 | to do is run a filter on your photographs, and the
filter is something called a Selective Gaussian Blur.
| | 00:33 | So in order to do this, you are going to have
to go up to the Filters menu, and access that.
| | 00:37 | But first, let's zoom in on this
photograph that we are looking at here.
| | 00:40 | I am just going to zoom in couple
of times with Shift+Plus on my keyboard.
| | 00:43 | I will switch to my Move Tool for a second,
and that way I can pan around in this document.
| | 00:49 | I basically just want to be able to see the chair,
and this low lying area here that's really dark.
| | 00:55 | You can really see the noise
in this area here if zoom in.
| | 00:58 | It's really grainy; really noisy.
| | 00:59 | What I want to do is remove some of
the noise from within these areas.
| | 01:04 | Now, unfortunately with the Selective
Gaussian Blur, you don't get the ability to control
| | 01:08 | specifically where the blur is introduced,
| | 01:10 | but if you create a duplicate layer of the
layer you working on, then can actually then
| | 01:16 | mask out the areas you don't need.
| | 01:18 | I will show you how to do that
towards the end of this movie.
| | 01:21 | First things first, though; let's see
the Selective Gaussian Blur dialog box.
| | 01:24 | Let's go to the Filters menu, let's go down the
Blur, and let's select Selective Gaussian Blur.
| | 01:30 | Now, in some cases this'll just pop
right up where you can see the dialog box.
| | 01:34 | I am on a Mac right now,
| | 01:35 | so it's not actually popping up for me.
| | 01:37 | So what you are going to have
to do is find this application;
| | 01:39 | it will be down in the dock running on its own.
| | 01:42 | So, the Selective Gaussian Blur
dialog box; relatively simple.
| | 01:45 | You can pan around inside the document.
| | 01:47 | You can see here when I click and
move, the blur temporally turns off.
| | 01:51 | You can also disable and enable the
Preview mode to see what's going on.
| | 01:55 | So, if I scroll down here, I can actually see
a lot of the different areas that are being
| | 02:01 | affected by this, and get a better
idea of how I'm affecting that blur.
| | 02:05 | So here is the chair area here, and
| | 02:06 | I am just going to move over, so I can see the
chair, and this little darker area over here.
| | 02:12 | I think that looks pretty good, but I
might want to crank this up a little bit.
| | 02:15 | So the blur radius, I am
going to keep that to about 10.
| | 02:18 | The Max Delta; that affects how broadly
this stretches out into the image, and
| | 02:23 | I'm a crank that back a little bit, because
I think it's a little too intense right now.
| | 02:27 | So, 25 works well for this.
| | 02:29 | These are what we call click and pick features.
| | 02:30 | You click until you find something that looks
good, and then you pick it, and stick with it.
| | 02:34 | So here we have a pretty decent reduction
in the noise, especially over here in these
| | 02:39 | dark shadow areas, you can see the
noise is significantly being reduced.
| | 02:43 | I'm not actually losing
a lot of detail out here.
| | 02:46 | I am, of course, going to lose some detail.
| | 02:48 | That's one of the drawbacks of noise reduction, but it
does a fairly decent job of not destroying the photo.
| | 02:53 | So I want to do here is just hit OK.
| | 02:57 | Once I hit OK, that's got to run the filter,
and you'll see it going across the bottom.
| | 03:00 | It's actually running the filter,
| | 03:01 | so don't think it's not doing anything.
When you first come back into GIMP, you have to
| | 03:06 | wait for this to render.
| | 03:07 | Once it renders, you will see the effects of
the Gaussian Blur applied to your photograph.
| | 03:12 | The larger the photo, the
longer this is going to take,
| | 03:15 | so you want to just wait it out a
little bit, and this is almost finished.
| | 03:19 | Once that process is completed, you will be
able to see the effects, and you can see here
| | 03:23 | that I have significantly reduced
the noise over here in the shadow area.
| | 03:27 | I'm not losing too much detail in the chair.
| | 03:29 | I do lose a little bit,
but not too, too much.
| | 03:33 | It's done a fairly decent job, but I might
actually want to just apply that noise reduction
| | 03:38 | to the areas in the shadow, or the areas around
the door, and leave the chair like it is, and
| | 03:43 | maybe just affect a few areas in the photo.
| | 03:45 | So how would I do that?
| | 03:46 | How would I do that selectively,
and get more control over that?
| | 03:49 | Well in GIMP, it's a
little bit of the workaround.
| | 03:51 | You will have to create what's called a duplicate
layer, and then add a layer mask to in order to do that.
| | 03:55 | That's actually fairly easy to do.
| | 03:56 | So let's do that now.
| | 03:56 | I am going to go to the
File menu, and choose Revert.
| | 04:00 | That's going to take me
back to the original photo.
| | 04:02 | When I done that, you will see
all the noise comes back in.
| | 04:05 | I am going to select my layer
here; it's just called Background.
| | 04:08 | Then you can see this little button in the
Layers panel that says Create a Duplicate layer.
| | 04:12 | When I do that, it creates
one called Background copy.
| | 04:14 | This is what we are going to blur,
| | 04:15 | so I am just going to double-click to
rename the layer, and call it Blur.
| | 04:20 | Now let's go up to the Filters menu, and
let's do Repeat Selective Gaussian Blur.
| | 04:26 | That's going to run this Gaussian blur that
we just ran on this new duplicate layer, leaving
| | 04:30 | the original background layer alone behind it.
| | 04:35 | Once that completes, you'll see the blur is
now applied to all areas of this photograph,
| | 04:41 | but remember, I might not want it to be
applied to all areas of the photo. I might want it
| | 04:45 | to be only applied to
certain areas of the photos,
| | 04:47 | so we need to go ahead and add a layer mask
to this, so that I can start working on that.
| | 04:51 | So in order to add a layer mask, make sure
you have the layer selected, go up to the
| | 04:54 | Layer menu, choose Mask,
and choose Add Layer mask.
| | 04:59 | What we are going to do here is we
are going to make it a black layer mask,
| | 05:03 | so I am going to choose Black layer mask, because I
want everything hidden in this photo to start off with.
| | 05:08 | I will hit Add.
| | 05:10 | Once I do that, you should see all of the
grainy information come back into the photo.
| | 05:14 | Now I am going to grab my brush
tool over here in the Tools panel.
| | 05:17 | I am going to make sure I am
working with nice a soft edged brush.
| | 05:20 | I might crank up the size
of the brush quite a bit.
| | 05:23 | Let's get something maybe like a 200
pixel brush, thereabouts. There we go.
| | 05:30 | I'll just move over into this area here.
| | 05:33 | This is the big area that I
really want to reduce the noise in.
| | 05:36 | Once I do that, I am going to make sure that
my foreground color is set to white, and then
| | 05:41 | I can just come out here, and look at this;
| | 05:42 | I can just essentially brush out
the noise from this shadowy area.
| | 05:47 | I will just do a quick overview of this.
| | 05:52 | Once I get that brushed in, you will be able to see
the noise reduction that I've applied. There we go.
| | 06:00 | That's just in that one specific area.
| | 06:02 | So now if I show you, here is before, and after.
| | 06:05 | Let's zoom out just a little bit,
so you can see the difference here.
| | 06:07 | Here is before, and after.
| | 06:10 | You can't really tell from zoomed out,
| | 06:12 | but if you are zoomed in quite a bit,
you will be able to see a big difference.
| | 06:15 | There is before, and after.
| | 06:18 | So I can just move around this photo, and selectively
remove noise from the areas I don't want there to be any.
| | 06:24 | I could also adjust the opacity of the brush
to bring back in certain areas a little bit
| | 06:29 | more, or a little bit less.
| | 06:30 | For instance, if I want to back this
Opacity down to something like 50%, I'm only going
| | 06:35 | to be bringing back in like
50% of that blurred layer.
| | 06:37 | So I could come in and sort of reduce the
noise in these areas beneath the chair, still
| | 06:42 | leaving a little bit of
that grain, but not much.
| | 06:44 | I might actually do the same thing for the chair,
but back it down something like maybe 30% or 25%.
| | 06:50 | That way I'm just barely blurring it out.
| | 06:52 | I'll be reducing the noise, but not so much
that it blurs the chair to the point where
| | 06:56 | you can't what it is.
| | 06:57 | So you can get really creative with this,
just by applying a layer mask, and using this
| | 07:02 | technique that I'm showing you here.
| | 07:04 | If you go up to the Layer menu, go down to
Mask, and choose Show Layer Mask, you can actually
| | 07:09 | see what you're doing here.
| | 07:10 | So essentially all I've done is applied complete
white to this large shadow area over here,
| | 07:16 | and 50% gray to some areas here,
30% gray to some areas here.
| | 07:21 | I mean, it's just all over
the place what I've been doing,
| | 07:24 | but it really works, and it's a
great way to reduce the noise.
| | 07:28 | So let's go back up to Layer > Mask, and
uncheck Show; that way you can see this. I will
| | 07:32 | zoom in one last time, and pan over here,
| | 07:36 | so you can see exactly what I've done.
| | 07:39 | Here's our final before; here's our after.
| | 07:43 | So I have done a significant amount of noise
reduction with Selective Gaussian Blur and
| | 07:47 | a layer mask here inside of GIMP.
| | 07:49 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Sharpening images| 00:00 | Now it's time to talk about sharpening images,
| | 00:03 | and this is something that every person who takes a
photograph at some point in time wants to know how to do.
| | 00:09 | They want to know, how do
I make my images sharper?
| | 00:11 | Well unfortunately, there is no real way to
sharpen an image in any image editing application.
| | 00:17 | There is no magic CSI enhance button that
you can just press, and it turns a blurry image
| | 00:23 | into a tack sharp photo.
| | 00:24 | It's just not possible.
| | 00:26 | What sharpening actually is, and what you
need to understand about sharpening is the fact
| | 00:30 | that most of the sharpening commands that
you find in image editing applications are
| | 00:34 | simply going to analyze your photo, and look
for edges between light and dark pixels, and
| | 00:39 | increase the contrast between those two areas
to make it appear as if there is more detail
| | 00:45 | there than it really is.
| | 00:47 | The problem with sharpening is the fact
that when you do this, you both lose pixel data,
| | 00:51 | and introduce noise into your photographs,
| | 00:53 | so you have to be very careful with this.
| | 00:55 | I think one of the most common things that
people do to their photographs is they oversharpen
| | 01:00 | them, and really degrade
the overall quality of photo.
| | 01:02 | A little sharpening goes all long way;
trust me.
| | 01:06 | In this movie, we are going to be exploring
two of the different sharpening tools that
| | 01:10 | are available to us inside of GIMP,
| | 01:12 | the first of which is just
the basic Sharpen command.
| | 01:14 | In order to find that, you're going to go to
the Filters menu, you are going to down to
| | 01:19 | Enhance, and you are just
going to choose Sharpen.
| | 01:21 | Now, if you are on a Mac, you
may have to go down to your dock.
| | 01:23 | If you are on a PC, you may have to go down
to the Start menu, and actually access that
| | 01:26 | little side application that runs.
| | 01:29 | Once that launches, you are
going to get the Sharpen dialog box.
| | 01:32 | Here you can just take one
slider to do all the work.
| | 01:36 | If I drag this all the way over to
100, you'll see exactly what happens.
| | 01:40 | This turns into completely black and white,
finding the edges; looks like complete garbage.
| | 01:47 | So if I turn that back down,
let's say, let's crank it to about 40,
| | 01:50 | then you can see, okay, here's 40. Here
is before, and after. That's not bad.
| | 01:55 | It's just increasing the contrast.
| | 01:57 | You can see especially right in this region
here, there is going to be a little bit of pop.
| | 02:00 | Watch this: before, after;
| | 02:02 | see how it just enhances the
details a little bit?
| | 02:04 | Cranking that up a little bit more,
you are going to see it a little bit more.
| | 02:07 | Let's crank it up really high; 75.
| | 02:09 | Right there, you see how that little thing looks like
the cracks got a little bit deeper; things like that?
| | 02:13 | All it's doing is popping the
highlights and darkening the shadows.
| | 02:16 | That's all it's doing.
| | 02:17 | So if you liked this single method of control,
you can just use this Sharpness value here.
| | 02:22 | However, it doesn't give you a full range
of control something like Unsharp Mask does.
| | 02:27 | So let's go ahead and cancel this out, and
let's take a look at the other way of sharpening
| | 02:31 | called Unsharp Mask.
| | 02:32 | I am going to up to the Filters menu again, go
down to Enhance, and go down to Unsharp Mask.
| | 02:38 | Unsharp Mask, same thing; you might have to launch
that external application if it launches on you.
| | 02:42 | Something like this.
| | 02:43 | So here we have Unsharp Mask, which is
probably one of the most popular ways of sharpening
| | 02:49 | a photo in any photo editing application.
| | 02:51 | You get a three level control system in here.
You have the Radius, you have the Amount,
| | 02:57 | and you have the Threshold.
| | 02:59 | Here is basically how I
think of this dialog box:
| | 03:01 | I always start with the Radius first, because
the Radius is actually referring to the size
| | 03:08 | of the light and dark pixels that
are being introduced into your image.
| | 03:11 | I've found that you are going to be a little
bit more successful when you are sharpening
| | 03:15 | if you opt to start right here,
as opposed to somewhere else.
| | 03:18 | I've also come to know a good rule of thumb
is, for the amount of detail that's in your
| | 03:22 | image, or the small items that are in your
photograph, then you want to keep the Radius
| | 03:27 | a little bit lower.
| | 03:28 | So if you have extreme detail, like gravel,
grass, small bits of rock, like we have here
| | 03:34 | in this photo, you want to
keep that Radius relatively low.
| | 03:38 | If there's not a whole lot of small items in your
photo, you can kind of crank that up a little bit.
| | 03:43 | For this particular photo, I think
somewhere around 5.5 to 6 is going to be plenty.
| | 03:49 | And I say that because, watch this. If I go to the
rocks right here, watch this; here is before, and after.
| | 03:54 | See? I am already getting
some intense shadows in there.
| | 03:56 | I am actually clippings some areas
that I probably don't want to clip,
| | 03:59 | so you've got to be careful with that.
| | 04:01 | Doing that any more, you might cause some
unnecessary noise, and artifacts, so 5.5 is plenty.
| | 04:06 | I might actually even back that down to
something like 4.5 to be more than enough.
| | 04:11 | Here is before, and after.
| | 04:12 | I always click the Preview on
and off every time I make a change.
| | 04:16 | That way I see exactly what
I'm doing at any given time.
| | 04:19 | If you want to check another area,
another great area to check in this photo
| | 04:22 | is going to be over here on these rocks,
because these have a lot of granular detail in them too.
| | 04:26 | So here's before, and after.
| | 04:29 | See? It doesn't even like
it's getting sharper to me.
| | 04:32 | It just to me looks like I'm blowing out
the highlights, and clipping the shadows.
| | 04:36 | Now let's move on to the Amount slider.
| | 04:37 | The Amount slider is
basically an intensity control.
| | 04:40 | So you have already set how
big this area is going to be.
| | 04:44 | Now we set how bright or
how dark it's going to be.
| | 04:46 | So if you crank the
Amount up, look what happens.
| | 04:49 | You get sort of this faux HDR
kind of hyper-realistic look.
| | 04:53 | It looks really, really bad,
especially on this photo.
| | 04:56 | However, if you're working in an area that
has not a lot of detail, maybe you were out
| | 05:00 | in the mist or something like that, you can
actually get away with cranking this up higher
| | 05:04 | to get a little bit more of
that edge detail in there.
| | 05:06 | But when you're working on something like
this; rocks, sidewalks, roads, hair, fur, whatever
| | 05:12 | it might be, you want to keep this pretty low.
| | 05:15 | I would even argue that you don't
even need to go all the way up to 1.
| | 05:18 | I would argue that for this particular photo
especially, that we can get away with something
| | 05:22 | like .5; maybe even .4 in this one.
| | 05:25 | So let's see a .5 versus, let's go to 1.
| | 05:29 | So here's .5 right here.
| | 05:30 | Let's go all the way up to 1.
That's 10, not 1.
| | 05:35 | Just enter in the number 1. There we go.
| | 05:38 | So there's 1 versus .5, and I will tab down.
| | 05:43 | See the difference between 1 and .5?
| | 05:45 | That's pretty significant difference.
| | 05:48 | Then finally at the bottom
we have a Threshold command.
| | 05:52 | So, there's a lot of people that say just
ignore the Threshold command, because it doesn't
| | 05:55 | really do anything,
| | 05:56 | but I have found that the Threshold
command actually does do something.
| | 06:00 | So, the more you increase the Threshold level, the
less the softer areas of the image will be affected.
| | 06:08 | Basically, what the Threshold command is
going to say is, okay, the higher I crank this up,
| | 06:13 | the more I want you to look for areas that actually
have already a good level of contrast between them.
| | 06:20 | So if we crank the Threshold up, you'll notice
that it actually looks softer in some of these
| | 06:25 | areas that already have
contrast built into them.
| | 06:29 | So this is actually good way of toning down
the areas that might become oversharp, and
| | 06:35 | reassuring us that the areas that didn't have
that beforehand remain as sharp as possible.
| | 06:42 | And so I might actually take this
to something like 9 or 10
| | 06:47 | in this case. Here's before, and after.
| | 06:50 | Pretty good amount of sharpening.
| | 06:52 | Here this is at 10.
| | 06:53 | Let's set it to 0, and tab away.
| | 06:55 | You can see some of the
brightness comes back in here.
| | 06:58 | I don't really like that,
| | 06:59 | so I want to tone that down a bit.
| | 07:01 | Let's crank it up to 10,
and then let's hit OK.
| | 07:04 | That's going to run on the image.
| | 07:05 | You are going to automatically see it
looks like it magically became sharper.
| | 07:09 | It really didn't become sharper;
| | 07:11 | we just popped the highlights, and popped the
shadows in those little contrast edge areas,
| | 07:15 | but still a pretty decent representation of
what sharpening can actually do to an image.
| | 07:21 | Here is before, and here is after.
| | 07:24 | If we zoom in right here on these rocks,
you can really see what's going on.
| | 07:28 | So here again, before, and after.
| | 07:31 | I am doing that with Command+Z or Control+Z,
and then Commande+Y or Control+Y to redo.
| | 07:37 | So hopefully by now you understand what sharpening
is, and how it works on your photo, and you
| | 07:44 | also understand how to use the two methods
that I showed you; both the regular sharpening
| | 07:48 | method, and also the three point
controls inside of Unsharp Mask as well.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adjusting image size| 00:00 | Resizing an image is one of the most basic
ways that you can change the image, whether
| | 00:04 | it's for distribution, putting it on the Web,
sending it through an e-mail; whatever it might
| | 00:08 | be, the reasons for changing the
physical size of an image range infinitely.
| | 00:13 | However, it is an essential part of your
workflow knowing how to resize an image.
| | 00:18 | And so in this movie, we are going to be exploring
that, and the different methods in which you can do it.
| | 00:22 | The easiest method inside of GIMP is to use the
Scale Image command, and that's found underneath
| | 00:26 | the Image menu, inside of Scale Image.
| | 00:29 | And once you do that, it should pop up with
a dialog box that looks something like this,
| | 00:32 | and you have three basic
points of control in here.
| | 00:35 | You have the actual Image Size, which refers
to the physical pixel size of the image; how
| | 00:39 | big the space is it takes up onscreen.
| | 00:43 | You then have the Print Resolution, which is set in
X and Y resolution. This is in terms of pixels per inch.
| | 00:49 | I will get to that in just a moment.
| | 00:51 | And then finally we have the Quality setting.
| | 00:53 | This is the setting that's used when resampling
this image in order to change the physical size of it.
| | 00:59 | You have three basic methods in here:
you have Linear, Cubic, and Sinc.
| | 01:04 | Cubic is going to be the best bet here;
the others just don't work quite as well.
| | 01:08 | Cubic is good for both resizing up and down,
| | 01:11 | although you want to stay away
from resizing up if you can help it.
| | 01:15 | So Image Size at the very top. This is the
actual physical pixel dimension of the document.
| | 01:20 | Right now this image is set to 4000
pixels by 3000 pixels, essentially.
| | 01:25 | There's a little bit more to that 4000
and 3000, but essentially it's 4000 by 3000.
| | 01:31 | And so if we wanted to shrink this down to
go out of the Web, chances are it's not going
| | 01:36 | to be at 4800 pixels, or 3200 pixels, or whatever this is;
you're going to want it to be significantly smaller than that.
| | 01:43 | Inside of these little boxes, you can just
simply enter in a pixel value. If you are
| | 01:46 | not sure what that is, check with your Web
developer, or whoever is needing this Web version
| | 01:50 | of the file, and see exactly what
the dimensions are that they need.
| | 01:54 | Once you know those dimensions,
just come in here and type them in.
| | 01:56 | Let's say that they said, okay, I
need this is at 600 pixels wide.
| | 02:00 | Okay, just enter in 600 pixels for the Width,
| | 02:05 | and if this link over here on the right-hand
side is connected, which it is, when you press
| | 02:09 | the Tab key, the Height value
will automatically adjust itself.
| | 02:14 | If this is disconnected, it will look like
this, then that means this value and this
| | 02:19 | value are controlled
independently of one another.
| | 02:22 | Chances are you don't want that, because
you can get some serious skewing of the image.
| | 02:25 | So let's go ahead and put those back
together, and everything will be fine.
| | 02:29 | Now, the pixel resolution underneath here; right
now it's set to 72 pixels per inch. You could
| | 02:34 | also choose pixels per millimeter, per point, pica,
centimeter, feet, whatever you wanted to choose.
| | 02:39 | The point to this is, this is actually
changing the resolution of the image.
| | 02:44 | The problem I have here is that it's a little
misleading. You can't technically change the
| | 02:48 | resolution of an image once an image is set,
especially a JPEG image; the resolution is
| | 02:52 | pretty much locked in.
| | 02:54 | You can go down in resolution, but going
up in resolution is theoretically not possible.
| | 02:59 | You can't really create pixel
data where pixel data doesn't exist.
| | 03:03 | So increasing this to something like 300 doesn't
exactly increase the quality of the photo, necessarily.
| | 03:08 | It does make it a 300 pixel per inch photo, but it's
just entering in what I consider to be garbage data.
| | 03:14 | So unless you're going from a high number to
a low number, I would just leave this alone,
| | 03:18 | and try to stick with what you have.
| | 03:20 | So in this case, I am going to be sending
this out to the Web anyway, so 72 pixels per inch
| | 03:24 | is perfect for that.
| | 03:25 | I now have the Image Size at 600 by 400.
| | 03:28 | When you're ready to
complete the change, just hit Scale.
| | 03:31 | Now, when this finishes, you may see something
like this on your screen, and you're going
| | 03:35 | to think, oh no, I shrank it way
too far. That's way too small.
| | 03:38 | The problem with that is you were looking
at a 4000 pixel wide image; chances are you
| | 03:43 | were looking at it at a certain
percentage of its actual width.
| | 03:47 | You weren't looking at it at 100%.
| | 03:49 | So in order to view this image at a 100%,
just hit the number 1 on your keyboard, and that
| | 03:54 | will automatically bring it to 100%, because
GIMP remembers the last magnification level
| | 03:59 | that you were at, and automatically reverts to
that as soon as you exit out of that dialog box.
| | 04:03 | So now you've got this, it's at 100%,
| | 04:06 | you have scaled it to 600 pixels wide, and
you're ready to save it, or send it out to
| | 04:11 | the Web, send it off for client approval,
or whatever it is that you might need to do.
| | 04:14 |
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| Using Liquid Rescale| 00:00 | Alright, now we have come to one of favorite features
inside of GIMP; it's something called Liquid Rescale.
| | 00:06 | So basically what this tool allows you to
do is rescale an image, and actually reshape
| | 00:12 | the image at the same time.
| | 00:13 | So basically, let's say we had this photo here,
| | 00:16 | and I wanted to take this photo from the current
orientation, which is a landscape orientation,
| | 00:21 | and make it a portrait orientation.
| | 00:23 | But I wanted to do so without actually losing
any of this information, like on the outside
| | 00:28 | or anything; I wanted it to
just simply squish together.
| | 00:30 | But if we try to squish this image together,
you'll see what happens if I did that. I would
| | 00:35 | actually start distorting
the people in the picture.
| | 00:38 | What I actually want to do is remove out some of
the space in between them, or something like that.
| | 00:42 | And in order to do that, I would have to do
some creative cropping, some layer masking,
| | 00:47 | some blending, and it just would take forever.
| | 00:50 | But with Liquid Rescale, it automatically removes
the parts of the image that I don't want, and
| | 00:54 | it knows what parts of the image I want to keep,
and it knows that just magically, which is nice.
| | 01:00 | So in order to use Liquid Rescale, if you
are on a Mac it's already included. If you're
| | 01:04 | not on a Mac, you may have to go and download it,
and you can do that from liquidrescale.wikidot.com,
| | 01:10 | and once you get there, you can go to the Liquid
Rescale page, which should come up automatically,
| | 01:15 | and you can go into the Download section.
| | 01:17 | You can also check out some of the Examples,
and on the example page, they do have a video
| | 01:22 | tutorial on how to use it.
They also has examples of it.
| | 01:25 | So here's the original photo; here's one that's
enlarged. So they have actually stretched out this canvas.
| | 01:30 | They have left the girl alone, though, so she
didn't get distorted; only the part right here did.
| | 01:35 | And then you've got an original here,
here, kind of stretched out a little bit.
| | 01:40 | This one here was kind of
large; now it's shrunk down.
| | 01:43 | It's really interesting some of
the examples that they have here.
| | 01:46 | And they also explain a little bit more
about the algorithm, which I am not necessarily
| | 01:49 | concerned about, because in my estimation, it
just works, and that's all I really care about.
| | 01:54 | So in order to do Liquid Rescale, what you
are going to do open up a photo inside of
| | 01:58 | GIMP, and once you have got a photo open inside
of GIMP that you want to rescale, you are going
| | 02:02 | to go up to the Layer menu, and you
are going to go down to Liquid Rescale.
| | 02:06 | Inside of the Liquid Rescale dialog box, which you
may have to pop up like an external application,
| | 02:10 | you are going to get a bunch of controls here.
| | 02:13 | And so basically the only thing you need to know
is what you want your new width and height to be.
| | 02:18 | If you want to switch to something called
Interactive mode, you can switch to Interactive
| | 02:23 | mode, but it says that you should note that
all your current settings will be applied.
| | 02:26 | And so if I switch over to that, it's going
to take me into this, and the Interactive mode
| | 02:32 | basically takes away all those other options.
| | 02:33 | But now what I'm going
to do is shrink this down.
| | 02:36 | So let's do something like 800 pixels wide, watch
when I tab down; watch what happens to the photo.
| | 02:45 | See how it's resizing? It's not getting rid of
anything, necessarily; it's just shrinking it down.
| | 02:50 | See how they are getting closer together?
| | 02:52 | And let's even push this closer.
Let's do 700.
| | 02:55 | There we go.
Now they are really close together.
| | 02:58 | And let's even push it farther. Let's do something
like 600, and see what that does. There we go.
| | 03:04 | And so now I have essentially changed the
entire layout of this photograph. I'll hit
| | 03:09 | Close, because it's already applied to it,
and let's do Edit > Undo Liquid Rescale, and
| | 03:16 | I will do this a couple of
times to get back to the original.
| | 03:19 | So here's the original photo, something just
like that, and so that's what I started with.
| | 03:25 | If I go to Layer > Liquid Rescale, and I'll bring
up that external window again, so you can see it.
| | 03:32 | Change that down to 600, and hit
OK. Check out what happens there.
| | 03:38 | So here is before, and after. Before, after;
that is absolutely insane to me to think that
| | 03:45 | it has preserved all of that information in
there. The photo doesn't look distorted in
| | 03:49 | any way; it just looks
like they're closer together.
| | 03:52 | They all just jumped at the same point, as
opposed to when they were here, and they were
| | 03:55 | all kind of spread apart.
| | 03:56 | So that's pretty neat.
| | 03:57 | You also have the ability inside of there --
I will go back to Layer > Liquid Rescale now.
| | 04:02 | You also have the ability in here to set
up something called Feature Masks, and so you
| | 04:07 | can base that off of a layer,
| | 04:09 | you can also say Feature discard mask, so
you can set up different layers that determine
| | 04:13 | parts and pieces of the image that you want
to keep; parts and pieces of the image that
| | 04:16 | you want to throw away.
| | 04:18 | So you see when I hover over this it says,
use an extra layer to treat selected areas
| | 04:22 | as if they were meaningless, this is useful
to remove parts of the image when shrinking.
| | 04:26 | You can also say, use an extra layer to
preserve selected areas from distortion.
| | 04:31 | So you could say, okay, I don't
want these areas to be distorted.
| | 04:35 | Extra layers are needed to activate feature
preservation, so you can create one with the
| | 04:39 | New button and paint on it, and
then press the Refresh button.
| | 04:43 | So basically what you're going to do is create
a new layer, paint something on it, and then
| | 04:46 | choose that as your mask.
| | 04:49 | And you can do that for
preservation, and discarding as well.
| | 04:53 | So for instance, let's go
ahead and hit Cancel for now.
| | 04:57 | Let's create a brand new layer in the Layers
panel, and I'll grab my brush tool, and I will
| | 05:05 | flip that to black.
| | 05:07 | And I am going to decrease the size of the
brush. Make sure my Opacity is at 100. That
| | 05:13 | ought to be okay.
Something around 80 should work.
| | 05:17 | And I am just going to brush
across the girls really quickly here.
| | 05:25 | Doesn't have to be perfect, by the way, as
long as you're determining what you want to keep.
| | 05:31 | So there we go, just painting around, making
sure I get all the detailed areas that I want
| | 05:39 | to keep, and just a quick paint
around should do it. There we go.
| | 05:49 | I'm going to rename this layer keep, and
once I do that, I can then set up another new
| | 05:54 | layer on top of that.
| | 05:57 | I'll call this one Discard, and
we will just paint out something.
| | 06:03 | I will increase the size of
the brush this time,
| | 06:05 | and I will just paint here, and here,
and if I need to down here. There we go.
| | 06:16 | And so now I have got my layers set up. I'll
select the liquid rescale layer, I will choose
| | 06:21 | Layer > Liquid rescale, I'll have
to pop open this; there we go.
| | 06:26 | Now I'll check Preserve features, and I'll select
the keep layer. There we go; we are preserving those.
| | 06:34 | Discard features, we are going to
select the Discard layer; there we go.
| | 06:39 | And let's go ahead and
resize this to 600, and hit OK.
| | 06:47 | That should preserve the things I want to
preserve, get rid of only what I want to get
| | 06:50 | rid of, and there we go.
| | 06:52 | And so once you have made your masks, you can
actually throw those away. So you can select
| | 06:56 | those layers, and toss them,
| | 06:58 | and then you could take this, save it out as
a brand new image, hopefully it has preserved
| | 07:01 | the areas you wanted to preserve, and only
gotten rid of the areas you wanted to get rid of,
| | 07:06 | and now you have a completely different
photo from what you started with, simply by using
| | 07:11 | this awesome tool called Liquid Rescale.
| | 07:13 |
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| Using the Cage Transform tool| 00:00 | Another one of GIMP's nice little transformation
tools is something called the Cage transformation tool.
| | 00:05 | It's located over here in your Tools panel,
and if you hover over it, it says Cage Transform.
| | 00:10 | It says it basically allows you to
deform a selection by using a cage.
| | 00:14 | And so I have got this document open here, I
am going to press the number 1 on my keyboard
| | 00:19 | to go to 100%, and then I am just going to
zoom out one time by pressing the Minus key
| | 00:24 | so you can see exactly what's going on.
| | 00:25 | I am going to select the Cage Transform
tool, and you will notice when you do that, you
| | 00:30 | have three tool options; create or adjust
the cage, deform the cage, and fill the original
| | 00:34 | position of the cage with a color.
| | 00:37 | And so in this case, I'm actually working
with a white background, so I am going to choose
| | 00:41 | to fill the original position of the cage with a
color, and so then I'm going to also create the cage.
| | 00:48 | So I am going to go ahead
and create the cage first.
| | 00:50 | Basically, when you create the cage, you are
just creating points along a path here that
| | 00:54 | you want to control, and I try to do this in
areas that I want to hinge, basically. So I
| | 01:00 | am just putting controls around where I think
this might hinge, and so with the dummy, it's
| | 01:07 | actually quite easy, because I just go where the
joints are inside of the mannequin figure here.
| | 01:14 | So just go along the edges, and we are essentially
putting it inside of a wire mesh that we are
| | 01:21 | then going to be able to control independently.
| | 01:26 | So I am just going to go all
the way around the figure here.
| | 01:29 | Again, this is just up to you how you want
to do this. You don't have to have any sort
| | 01:35 | of rhyme or reason why you do this, but like I said,
I try to follow different areas that I want to control.
| | 01:45 | It makes it a little bit easier.
| | 01:48 | You don't have to be very accurate with
this either; that's the great part about it.
| | 01:55 | Once you get back around, you want to make
sure that this little circle turns to white,
| | 01:58 | and you can complete the cage, and so once
that is finished, you have now completed your
| | 02:03 | cage, and it should automatically switch
over to the deform cage option. So now what
| | 02:09 | I'm able to do is come out here and make a
selection around different cage points, and
| | 02:14 | then take those cage
points, and move them around.
| | 02:19 | So you can see when I move that around, it
actually moves the handles with it, and let's
| | 02:24 | say that I wanted to make an adjustment of
these two points, I could do so, and sort of
| | 02:31 | bring that back down a little bit.
| | 02:33 | It's almost like a liquid type of rescale
that's going on here, but at the same time,
| | 02:37 | you get all these different points of control,
| | 02:39 | so if I wanted to move this whole arm, I
would select all of these different points, like
| | 02:44 | this, and then you can
just swing this down, like so.
| | 02:50 | You get some pretty neat looking controls
with this, and it takes it a minute to render,
| | 02:55 | but once it does render, it renders quite
nicely, and pretty quickly. It's filling
| | 02:59 | in the original position with a color, and
it's trying to determine the best color for that.
| | 03:04 | And so now I can select the feet, and
I might even select this whole leg;
| | 03:10 | let's select the whole leg.
| | 03:12 | Let's grab the whole leg here. There we go.
And we can just sort of drag that up. And you
| | 03:18 | can see where you might need to add some control
points to this, so I would actually want to
| | 03:23 | add more control points to this than what
I have been, but I just might want to move
| | 03:27 | that out a little bit. There we go.
| | 03:29 | Again, you got to give it a minute to sort
of catch its breath. It is doing a lot of
| | 03:33 | heavy lifting. So I'll grab this foot here, the leg
and let's kind of move that back over; pretty neat.
| | 03:45 | And so you get the idea of how this works.
| | 03:47 | You are basically enclosing your object
inside of this wire mesh, and then with that wire
| | 03:52 | mesh around the object, you are able to
manipulate it, and change it in different ways,
| | 03:57 | and so this is a really interesting tool.
| | 03:59 | I can see this being used not only for
some crazy things, like what I am doing here
| | 04:02 | onscreen, but also for some
basic photo retouching too.
| | 04:06 | You could put some control points around someone's
mouth, and make them smile. You could put some
| | 04:09 | control points around their
eyebrows, and move those up or down.
| | 04:13 | You could change arm position, head position,
all different types of things could be done
| | 04:17 | with this, and I see a lot of potential here,
but for the most part, it's just as simple
| | 04:22 | as setting your control points, then selecting
those points, and then moving them around,
| | 04:26 | no matter what the image, or what the project. I see
this having multiple uses in multiple different ways.
| | 04:32 | So take some time and practice with this.
| | 04:34 | It's not exactly a natural tool that you are
going to feel comfortable with right off the
| | 04:38 | bat, but once you figure out how to work
this thing, and how to set up the control points,
| | 04:42 | you'll be amazed at the amount of creative
control you're going to have over your images
| | 04:46 | when you're using a tool
like the Cage Transform.
| | 04:49 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Working with PathsWhat are paths?| 00:00 | In this chapter, we are going to be
talking about paths inside of GIMP, and I want to
| | 00:05 | take a moment and explain to
you exactly what a path is.
| | 00:08 | And so in other applications, you may have
heard these things referred to as vector paths,
| | 00:13 | and the same holds true inside of GIMP. They
are vector-based, which means they are made
| | 00:17 | up of mathematical formulas, as opposed to pixels, and
can be scaled and transformed infinitely without penalty.
| | 00:23 | The difference between a path in GIMP
versus something like Photoshop is the fact that
| | 00:28 | paths in GIMP exist merely as paths. There
is no way to convert them to something like
| | 00:33 | a vector shape, or something like that.
| | 00:35 | So you use paths as a method for making selections.
You also use them as a method for creating
| | 00:40 | shapes that you can then fill
with a color by creating layers.
| | 00:43 | But I wanted to take a moment to talk about
the anatomy of a path, so let's take a look here.
| | 00:46 | I have got this document open, and inside of
this document, there are four paths that I've
| | 00:51 | based upon some selections that I've
made, and also some things that I've drawn.
| | 00:55 | So I have got this one right here, which is
a square, I've got a circle, and then I've
| | 00:58 | got two unnamed line segments
that I have drawn.
| | 01:01 | So you can see that paths actually can
contain both straight and curved lines.
| | 01:06 | So as you can see here, I was able to draw a
square, which is located right here in the left corner.
| | 01:10 | I'm also able to draw a circle, like this.
| | 01:12 | I'm able to draw straight lines, and I'm also
able to draw curved lines by using something
| | 01:17 | called the Paths Tool.
| | 01:19 | Now, when we talk about paths, we are actually
talking about multiple things that exist inside
| | 01:23 | of a path that comprise it.
| | 01:24 | So let me switch to the Paths Tool here for
a second, and I'll go to the Edit button, and
| | 01:28 | when I do that, I can click on one of these
paths, and you'll notice when I click on one
| | 01:31 | of the paths that I get these two little
dots at either end, and that indicates something
| | 01:36 | called an anchor point.
| | 01:37 | The anchor points are what we use to modify
the path. You can see here I can take this
| | 01:42 | in, and move it out.
| | 01:43 | I can do all kinds of things with it.
| | 01:45 | I can also hold down the Command or Control key
while I am dragging out a piece of that, and
| | 01:51 | I can get a direction handle.
| | 01:52 | If this had a curve on it, I would
actually be adjusting the curve right now.
| | 01:55 | I can also Command+Click or Control+Click
that same point again, and I can turn it into a
| | 02:00 | curve if I wanted to. I can step back by using
Command+Z or Control+Z to undo those at any time.
| | 02:06 | If I switch back over here to the Move Tool,
you'll notice I cannot really pick up this
| | 02:10 | path unless I have this mode
targeted in the tool options.
| | 02:15 | And so if I do that, I'm now able to pick
up this path, and actually move it around.
| | 02:19 | So let's toss it up here for the moment,
| | 02:21 | and let's go back over to my Paths Tool, and I
am going to click right down here on this one.
| | 02:25 | You will notice when I click on this path,
it has just a standard anchor point over here
| | 02:29 | on the left, and it also has this anchor point
with direction handles over here on the right.
| | 02:33 | I can actually take these direction handles,
and change the curvature of the path in any way
| | 02:38 | I want just by dragging them around, like so.
| | 02:44 | Inside of the Paths panel, you have access
to all of the different paths that you have
| | 02:48 | in your document. You can turn them on and
off by toggling the visibility icon to the
| | 02:52 | left, and when you do that, you're just temporarily
hiding the path from view; the path still
| | 02:57 | exists inside of the document.
| | 02:59 | You can select any one of the paths by clicking
on it in this dialog box, and it will make
| | 03:06 | that the active path that
you're currently working on.
| | 03:08 | This is an easy way to switch
between paths inside of GIMP.
| | 03:12 | You can also use the buttons at the bottom
to either create a new path, raise the path
| | 03:17 | in the stacking order, lower it in the stacking
order, you can also duplicate paths; you can
| | 03:22 | turn a path into a selection.
| | 03:24 | So for instance, if I have this path selected,
and I want a rectangular selection just like
| | 03:27 | that, I will just click this button, and
I get an active selection, just like that.
| | 03:32 | You can press Shift+Command+A or Shift+
Control+A on the keyboard to deselect that.
| | 03:37 | If you had a selection made, you could use
this button to turn a selection into a path,
| | 03:41 | and you can also choose this option to paint along
a path. We'll talk about that a little bit later on.
| | 03:46 | If you want to get rid of a path,
just simply hit the trash can icon.
| | 03:49 | So for instance, if I don't want this straight
line across the top, I'll select that path
| | 03:53 | in the Paths panel, and then click the trash can.
| | 03:56 | When I click the trash can, it just goes away.
| | 03:58 | There's no confirmation dialog box, or
anything else that pops up; it just goes way.
| | 04:02 | You can immediately undo that with Command+Z
or Control+Z, and it will bring it right back in.
| | 04:06 | So hopefully this explains a little bit about
what a path is, and how to work with it a little
| | 04:11 | bit here inside of GIMP, and hopefully this
gives you a good jumping off point as we begin
| | 04:15 | our conversation about paths in this chapter.
| | 04:18 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Paths tool| 00:00 | Now that we have a basic understanding of
what paths are, let's take a look at how we
| | 00:03 | can create our own paths here inside of
GIMP by using something called the Paths Tool.
| | 00:09 | In order to do this, I am going to start a
brand new document, and I am going to show
| | 00:12 | you two ways to create a path.
| | 00:14 | So I'm going to just stick with the 800 x 600
document here, and I am going to make sure
| | 00:18 | I am working with the Paths Tool.
| | 00:20 | You can get to that by hitting
the letter B on your keyboard.
| | 00:23 | When you get to the letter B on your keyboard,
and you get to the Paths Tool, you are going
| | 00:26 | to see the tool options switch to Paths mode
and you can choose between Design, Edit, and
| | 00:31 | Move mode. Snd so Design mode basically means
that you want to design a path, or create a path.
| | 00:37 | You can also choose Polygonal if you want
to restrict the editing to only the polygons
| | 00:42 | that exist onscreen.
| | 00:43 | And so right now what I want to do is just
be in Design mode, with nothing else selected.
| | 00:48 | And so basically, what you're able to do
here is just click, and click to add two points.
| | 00:54 | And these two points have an anchor point on each
end, and then a line segment connecting them in between.
| | 00:59 | You can continue adding points to this.
| | 01:03 | And one of the interesting things about the
Paths Tool inside of GIMP is the fact that
| | 01:07 | when I get back over to this path right here, you
would expect this to close the path, and make a full shape.
| | 01:13 | However, when you first do this, you click
on this, nothing happens in between these
| | 01:16 | two points, except for right here,
this becomes now the active point.
| | 01:20 | So now I can continue drawing from this point,
| | 01:25 | and I can go down, around, like so.
| | 01:29 | So that's kind of an interesting change,
in my opinion, from a traditional pen tool, or
| | 01:37 | Paths Tool as it might be
called inside of this program.
| | 01:40 | Now, you can hold down Command+
Z or Control+Z to undo your path,
| | 01:44 | do I'll just do that until I
get back to my original.
| | 01:46 | And so traditionally, when you just click
around, it creates nothing but straight lines.
| | 01:51 | If you wanted to modify this in some way, all
you have to do is come to one of the points,
| | 01:55 | hold down the Command key on the Mac, the
Control key on the PC; you'll notice when I do
| | 01:58 | that, the icon changes a little bit,
| | 02:01 | and you'll also notice that over here in the
Paths panel, as I'm holding down the Command
| | 02:04 | or Control key that it has
temporarily switched to Edit mode.
| | 02:07 | Watch; if I release my Command key, it switches to
Design mode. Holding it down again switches to Edit mode.
| | 02:13 | So this allows me to actually take a straight
segment, and add directional points to it,
| | 02:19 | so that I can then control its curvature.
| | 02:21 | So I could curve this up; something like that.
| | 02:26 | And then it switches back to Design mode, where I
can then continue to make changes to it, like so.
| | 02:33 | So that's a pretty neat little
addition to this tool as well.
| | 02:36 | One of the best parts about this tool is
the fact that you can use this tool to create
| | 02:42 | very complex paths around different objects
that might be a little bit more complex than,
| | 02:46 | say, a rectangle, or an
elliptical select tool could get you.
| | 02:50 | So let's undo all the way back
to where we have nothing onscreen,
| | 02:53 | and I am going to show you how to draw a
curved segment. That's one of the things people want
| | 02:57 | to know the most about,
is how to draw the curves.
| | 02:59 | So, in order to draw a curve, instead of
just clicking and releasing your mouse, and then
| | 03:02 | moving on to the next point, instead, this
time click and hold somewhere on the screen,
| | 03:07 | and then just drag the points outward.
| | 03:11 | It does not matter where you drag them right now,
because we are going to fix this in just a moment.
| | 03:14 | And then once you do that, release your mouse,
find another piece on the screen where you
| | 03:19 | want put your second point, doesn't matter
where, and then click and hold with your mouse.
| | 03:23 | Do not let go of the mouse yet.
| | 03:25 | Now, the key to curves, when drawing these
things, is to always make sure that you drag
| | 03:31 | the point in the opposite
direction you want your curve to go.
| | 03:35 | So if I wanted to draw an S-curve from this, I
would actually pull down, so that this curve goes up.
| | 03:43 | If I wanted to draw a regular curve, I just
go up, so that the curve goes down, and then
| | 03:49 | I can control the curvature
by twisting this point around.
| | 03:55 | So again, drag it in the opposite
direction you want the curve to go.
| | 04:00 | When you're finished, release it,
and you're pretty much done.
| | 04:03 | So this would be a great little path to
put some text along the side of it, or whatever
| | 04:07 | I wanted to do with it. I could also combine it
with other straight segments to make selections
| | 04:11 | of objects. Very cool, the things
that you can do with the Paths Tool.
| | 04:15 | Now, there is one other mode inside of the
Paths Tool; it's called the Move mode, and
| | 04:18 | this essentially allows you to come out here, and
grab this path, and actually physically move it around.
| | 04:23 | If you were to switch to Edit mode without
holding down the Command or Control key, this
| | 04:27 | gives you the ability to come out here,
and just freely mess with a path, like so.
| | 04:33 | You can also switch what
points you're working on.
| | 04:37 | If you happen to come over here, though, and
you see the two little circles conjoin, like
| | 04:41 | this, that means you're about
to connect these two segments,
| | 04:44 | and if you do that, it connects them
back, and that has now become a shape.
| | 04:50 | So this is how you complete
a shape using the Paths Tool.
| | 04:55 | So this would be actually a pretty
neat way to draw something like a leaf.
| | 04:58 | So, you can see here, if I just kind of position this here,
mess with this angle just a little bit; there we go!
| | 05:08 | Made kind of an interesting little kind of
leaf shape, or pear shape, whatever you think
| | 05:14 | that might look like; totally up to you.
| | 05:17 | So this is a great little tool that you
can draw some really nice vector shapes, which
| | 05:22 | you can then turn into a selection,
| | 05:24 | and you do that by coming over to the
Paths panel, and clicking on Path to selection.
| | 05:28 | Once you click on Path to selection, it
gives you an active selection around the object
| | 05:32 | that you're working on.
| | 05:33 | So now I can move into the Layers panel.
| | 05:35 | I can create a new layer, and I'll just hit OK.
| | 05:40 | Once I do that, I have an
active selection on that layer.
| | 05:42 | I'll go over the Paths panel really quick,
and I can actually throw this path away.
| | 05:46 | Don't need that anymore.
| | 05:48 | Go back over into my Layers panel,
and I can now fill this with a color.
| | 05:51 | So let's say this was a leaf.
| | 05:53 | I'll select a green color; hit OK.
| | 05:56 | Grab my paint bucket tool, and fill it,
and now I have this green shape, and I can
| | 06:02 | use Shift+Command+A, or Shift+Control+A
on the PC to deselect it.
| | 06:07 | I could then take my Rotate Tool, bring that
out here, and I can rotate this object around.
| | 06:14 | Hit Rotate, and there we go.
| | 06:18 | So there is my nice little leaf shape.
| | 06:20 | I can then copy that, duplicate
it around, turn it into a flower,
| | 06:23 | I could do lots of different things with it,
| | 06:25 | but I started it all with the Paths Tool.
| | 06:28 | So I hope now you have a better understanding
of how to draw both straight and curved segments
| | 06:33 | using the Paths Tool.
| | 06:34 | You can use that to create your own shapes,
or to make complex selections around objects
| | 06:38 | to create composites.
| | 06:39 | It's a very powerful tool.
| | 06:40 | It will take some practice,
| | 06:42 | but eventually you can nail it down, and
you can turn it into one of your really big
| | 06:45 | essential workflow pieces.
| | 06:47 |
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| Using paths with brushes| 00:00 | In addition to using paths to make selections
around objects inside of GIMP, you can also
| | 00:04 | use paths to enhance the artwork in an artistic fashion
by applying brushstrokes to the paths that you create.
| | 00:11 | In this movie, I am going to be exploring
how to add interactivity between brushes and
| | 00:15 | paths inside of GIMP.
| | 00:17 | So the first thing I am going to do is I
am going to make a selection inside of this
| | 00:20 | image by using the rectangular select tool.
| | 00:23 | And I am just going to go just inside the
image on all four sides, something like this;
| | 00:28 | it doesn't really matter how far or how
close you are to the inside of the photo, just as
| | 00:33 | long as you have a little border there.
| | 00:34 | So what I am going to do now is
come over into the Paths panel,
| | 00:37 | and I am going to go down to the bottom, and
there's a little button called Selection to path.
| | 00:41 | This turns the active selection
you have onscreen into a path.
| | 00:44 | And so when I click that, you are
going to see a new path pops up there.
| | 00:47 | I can then go into the Select menu, and choose
None, or press Shift+Command+A, and I'll turn
| | 00:51 | on the path, so you can actually see it there.
| | 00:53 | I am now going to switch to the brush tool,
| | 00:56 | and when I switch to the brush tool, you should
see just the path inside of the window, and
| | 00:59 | that's all you need to see.
| | 01:00 | Now what you need to do is you need to determine
the color of what you're going to be applying to this.
| | 01:04 | So in this case, I think I am going to do
something a little bit out of the ordinary.
| | 01:09 | Let's do something -- yellow might look
nice on this since it's a sunset photo.
| | 01:14 | So we'll do kind of a golden
yellow; something like that. Hit OK.
| | 01:19 | I'm also going to make sure that I have a
decent sized brush, so something like 50 pixels
| | 01:25 | should do it; around about 50 to 55. Something
like that, as long as you're somewhere in
| | 01:30 | that range. Back that down a little bit.
| | 01:33 | And once I get this set up just the way I like
it, I'm ready to start applying it to the path.
| | 01:38 | So I am just going to set this
to 55; somewhere thereabout.
| | 01:42 | I am going to make sure I got the
color right, everything is good; okay.
| | 01:46 | So now, once we have that, we are
going to come over into the Paths panel,
| | 01:50 | and in the Paths panel, I am just
going to click this button right here.
| | 01:52 | You have to make sure you have the path selected,
and then click this button right here at the
| | 01:55 | bottom that says Paint along the path.
| | 01:58 | When you do that, you have two options: either
stroke with a line, or stroke with the paint tool.
| | 02:04 | When you stroke with the paint tool, it's
going to remember all of the settings you
| | 02:06 | have set up down here, and it's going to use
the current colors that you have set up as well.
| | 02:10 | And so, when you paint with the paint tool,
and you are going to select the Paintbrush,
| | 02:13 | because that's the last brush you're using.
You could also pick from any one of these
| | 02:16 | other items here, but the Paintbrush is the
one that has the most creative input, I think.
| | 02:21 | So, you can also choose
to simulate brush dynamics.
| | 02:24 | That means make it look as if the brush was
going stronger in places, and weaker in other,
| | 02:28 | and simulating sort of hand
pressure as you drew around this thing.
| | 02:31 | So I am going to turn that on as well,
| | 02:32 | and then when I click Stroke, you are going
to see this nice little border pop up, based
| | 02:37 | on the brush that I picked over here.
| | 02:39 | Now, if you are not happy with that, that's okay;
you can undo it with Command+Z or Control+Z,
| | 02:42 | and you can change the brush.
| | 02:44 | So let's change this to a different brush.
| | 02:46 | Let's change it to something
like an Oils brush. There we go.
| | 02:51 | Let's reduce the size
even more than we had before,
| | 02:54 | so let's do something like 25 this time,
| | 02:57 | and everything else looks good.
| | 02:58 | I wasn't really happy with the color either,
| | 03:00 | so let's just introduce a black.
| | 03:02 | That way, it's going to be black down here at
the bottom, and it will kind of run together,
| | 03:06 | but it will show really nice
around the top. Hit OK. There we go.
| | 03:08 | So we've got a black brush, the
Oils brush, 25 pixels; I am ready to go.
| | 03:12 | Come back over to the Paths panel, click
Paint along path, make sure Stroke with a paint
| | 03:16 | tool, Paintbrush is selected, Emulate
brush dynamics, and Stroke. There we go.
| | 03:22 | And so now I'll come back over, turn this path
off, so you can see actually see what happened.
| | 03:26 | And so now I've got this border that goes around
the photo, and it kind of fades out towards the ages.
| | 03:32 | Really interesting effect. But you get different
effects each and every time depending on the
| | 03:35 | brush, and the settings that you choose here
inside of the Paintbrush options. So let's undo it.
| | 03:41 | Let's try this one more time.
| | 03:42 | I am just going to Command+Z or
Control+Z until I get back to normal.
| | 03:46 | Let's change the brush one more,
| | 03:48 | and this time I am going to pick
something like Texture, or Vegetation.
| | 03:52 | That might be a good one.
| | 03:54 | Vegetation looks good. So, 25.
| | 03:57 | Let's change the color this time to something like
maybe a really dark sort of red color. Here we go.
| | 04:04 | Hit OK.
| | 04:05 | And everything else looks good.
| | 04:07 | Let's stroke the path one more time. Stroke
with the paint tool, Paintbrush, Emulate brush
| | 04:11 | dynamics, and Stroke. There we go.
| | 04:14 | And so I'll turn this off, so you can see
it, and then we have just a little pattern
| | 04:18 | going around the outside.
| | 04:19 | Again, totally up to you what you pick, and
how you do this, but just coming over, picking
| | 04:24 | a brush, setting up the brush, all of the
options that you want, changing the color,
| | 04:31 | and then clicking this button over here on
the right, hitting the Stroke command allows
| | 04:36 | you to create some really interesting
looks without having to do a whole lot of work.
| | 04:41 | All you had to do was set up a brush,
draw a path, and click a button.
| | 04:44 | So hopefully now you get a better idea of
what it means to sort of interact a path with
| | 04:49 | a brush, and hopefully, this has given you
some ideas on how you can enhance and sort
| | 04:53 | of finish off your artwork
inside of GIMP in a more creative way.
| | 04:57 |
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|
|
6. Working with TextAdding text to images| 00:00 | One of the most simple ways to add something
extra to your designs in any program is to add text.
| | 00:06 | Text is how we convey messaging to people
in graphic design, and it's a really great
| | 00:12 | way to get your message out to people, and get
it across in a very interesting and creative way.
| | 00:17 | So, in GIMP we can actually add text to images
fairly easily by using the Text Tool, and that's
| | 00:22 | what we're going to do in this movie here.
| | 00:24 | Now, you have a couple of
different ways to do this.
| | 00:26 | You can do either something
called point text, or paragraph text.
| | 00:30 | Point text just means you are going to
click and start typing inside of GIMP, and
| | 00:34 | you can also do something called paragraph text,
where you click and drag out a box to do that as well.
| | 00:39 | In order to click and drag out a box, you
simply take the Text Tool, which is located
| | 00:42 | here, and you click and drag out a box
as big or as small as you need it to go.
| | 00:47 | It doesn't matter if you get it right the first
time, because you can always resize the box later.
| | 00:51 | Once you do that, you're going to be able
to then start typing inside of said box.
| | 00:56 | You can do that just by pressing the typing keys on
your keyboard, and you can type in whatever you want.
| | 01:01 | So in this case, I want Haunted,
and then I'll hit Enter, House.
| | 01:04 | And you notice here that my text kind of falls
off the screen, and I can adjust it by adjusting
| | 01:12 | the size of the box, just like so.
| | 01:14 | As you're typing out text, you do have the
ability to change things up here at the top
| | 01:19 | as you go. So you can select pieces of your text,
and then make changes to it, like the physical size.
| | 01:25 | So, right now mine is at 130 pixels.
| | 01:28 | You can also do things like clear the style
of the selected text, make it bold if it has
| | 01:33 | bold associated with it, you can make
it italic, you can also underline it,
| | 01:37 | you can strikethrough, you can
also change the baseline of the text,
| | 01:43 | you can set the kerning values for
the text, and you can change the color.
| | 01:46 | So if I wanted to make this something like
an orange color, let's set this up something
| | 01:51 | like that, kind of a dark
orange; there we go. Hit OK.
| | 01:54 | Now, once I do that, I'll switch
to the Move Tool, so you can see it.
| | 01:57 | Make sure you have the text layer
selected, and make sure you're on the text,
| | 02:00 | and you can just pick that up,
and drag it around.
| | 02:02 | Now, if you don't have this font,
it doesn't necessarily matter.
| | 02:05 | I am just showing you how to add
simple text to your documents here.
| | 02:09 | If you want to edit your text document, just
grab the Text Tool again, come back in here,
| | 02:13 | and you can edit the text document.
| | 02:15 | So you can change this to say something else,
like spooky, and then you could come in and
| | 02:21 | change the color of that as well.
| | 02:22 | So maybe you want that to be sort of a bright
orange color, or something like that, and exclamation
| | 02:28 | point, then we'll switch to the Move Tool
here, and just of kind of put this in position
| | 02:32 | wherever we want it to go.
| | 02:34 | So, no matter what, adding text to your
images is a great way to add that little something
| | 02:38 | extra, and adding text is actually fairly
simple just by using the Text Tool inside
| | 02:44 | of GIMP; drawing out a box, typing out
what you need, and then once you get your text
| | 02:47 | typed, or you could even paste it in from a
word processing program, then you can take
| | 02:52 | that text, and edit it further using some of the Type
panel options that are available to you inside of GIMP.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Typing text on a path| 00:00 | When I first started using GIMP, one of the
things that was a glaring omission, in my opinion,
| | 00:04 | was the fact that there
was no type on a path tool.
| | 00:07 | And so when you're talking about typography,
being able to flow text along a path, or something
| | 00:12 | that you draw is very important.
| | 00:14 | Whether that's something that's, like, circular,
or a curve, or whatever it might be, text on
| | 00:18 | a path is an essential part
of any design application,
| | 00:21 | so when I got to studying GIMP, I was very
confused at the fact that they didn't have a
| | 00:26 | text on a path tool.
| | 00:27 | As I continued to do my research, I realized
there is a way to do it, although it's a bit
| | 00:31 | of a hack, and you really have to pay attention
to what you're doing in order to get it to work.
| | 00:36 | And so that's what I am going to be talking
about in this movie: how to flow text along a path.
| | 00:39 | You have to know two things
when you're dealing with this.
| | 00:41 | You have to first know how to draw a path,
| | 00:43 | so if you don't know about that, go back and
watch some of the movies that I have on creating paths.
| | 00:47 | And then number two, you have to make sure
you get your text exactly like you want it
| | 00:50 | before you flow it onto the path, because there
is no editing the text once it is flowed along
| | 00:55 | the path; that's the drawback here.
| | 00:57 | So, in this document that I have open,
I have a path already drawn for you,
| | 01:02 | and so it looks something
like this; just a gradual curve.
| | 01:04 | You can go over it in the Paths panel, and
turn that on to see that, and it should
| | 01:07 | look just like this.
| | 01:08 | And then I also have some
text down here at the bottom.
| | 01:10 | You can use your own text if you want.
| | 01:11 | I am just using some example text.
| | 01:13 | What you want to do is have that path active,
have it somewhere in the window where you
| | 01:16 | can see it, and then also
have this type selected.
| | 01:20 | So grab your Type Tool,
and select across it, like so.
| | 01:24 | If you want the text to flow along a path, you just
right-click on it, and then choose Text along Path.
| | 01:31 | And when you do that, the type will
automatically flow across the path as best it can.
| | 01:38 | That is essentially what you get right there;
that's it, because this is no longer text.
| | 01:44 | If I try to select this with the Text
Tool, notice I can't do anything with it.
| | 01:47 | And you'll also notice over here in my Paths
panel, I have a brand new path over here,
| | 01:52 | and that path is this text.
| | 01:54 | If I turn off the original,
there is that path by itself.
| | 01:58 | If I wanted to, I could right-click on this
path, and go down, and I could choose to add
| | 02:03 | this to a selection,
| | 02:05 | and it would create a selection
from this path.
| | 02:07 | I could then turn it off, go back over into
my Layers panel, create a brand new layer,
| | 02:14 | and then fill this with a color.
| | 02:16 | So I could fill this with,
let's say, red.
| | 02:20 | Come out here and click
somewhere inside of that,
| | 02:23 | and then just go to
select None, and there we go.
| | 02:26 | So there is, essentially, my text on a path.
| | 02:29 | Like I said, it's a bit of a hack, and you
do have to get your path just right, and it's
| | 02:33 | somewhat of a crapshoot when it
comes to putting text on a path,
| | 02:36 | but it is able to be done.
| | 02:38 | You can do it inside of GIMP. So luckily I
did the research, and figured out how to do it,
| | 02:43 | but I just wanted to point it out to you
that it is possible, in case you happen to
| | 02:46 | be looking for a tool that does
that. There is no specific tool.
| | 02:49 | You just have to create your text, create
your path, and then merge the two together,
| | 02:53 | and then somehow turn that path back
into a usable object in your design.
| | 02:58 | So hopefully this explains a little bit
about what type on a path is, and how to create
| | 03:02 | it here inside of the GIMP application.
| | 03:04 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Converting text to a path| 00:00 | In addition to just creating regular old text,
or even just basic text on a path, you can
| | 00:05 | also take text one step further inside of
GIMP by converting text into a path, and then
| | 00:11 | using that path to perform different transformations
on the text to create perspective, or any
| | 00:16 | number of different effects
that you might want to apply to it.
| | 00:19 | You can then take that path, and stroke it
or fill it with a color, and therefore making
| | 00:23 | it look as if you've created some really interesting
text, when in fact you've done nothing more
| | 00:27 | than manipulate a path.
| | 00:29 | So in this movie, I am going to show you
how to convert text into a path, and then I'll
| | 00:32 | show you a quick method for transforming that path
into perspective to give it a little bit more depth.
| | 00:37 | So let's go up to the File menu,
and just create a brand new file.
| | 00:41 | And in this case, I am going to pick
something like 800 × 600, and I'll click OK.
| | 00:46 | And once I create this new document, I am
just going to grab the Text Tool, and I'll
| | 00:49 | click to draw out a box,
| | 00:50 | and I am just going to
type out the word Path.
| | 00:54 | I'll select that text, and let's blow it up quite
a bit; something like 160 ought to do the trick.
| | 01:02 | And so once I have that text in place -- really
doesn't matter what it looks like, or anything
| | 01:06 | else; I just have this now.
| | 01:08 | I'll grab the Move Tool, and
position it somewhere close to the center.
| | 01:13 | Once I do that, I am ready to start converting
this into a path, and that's very easy to do.
| | 01:17 | All you have to do is grab your Text Tool,
select the text all the way across, right-click,
| | 01:23 | and then choose Path from Text.
| | 01:26 | When I do that, you're not going to see
anything happen onscreen, necessarily.
| | 01:31 | If I switch to the Move Tool now,
you're not going to see anything,
| | 01:33 | but if I go over here in my Layers panel,
and click up here at the top where it says
| | 01:36 | Paths, you will see a new path right there.
| | 01:39 | It is hidden currently.
| | 01:40 | If I turn on the visibility, you'll see the
outline pop up around the text you have already.
| | 01:44 | I'll go over to my Layers panel, and temporarily
turn off the text layer, and now you can see
| | 01:49 | that path exists right there in the middle.
| | 01:51 | I can even go as far as to
throw this text layer away.
| | 01:55 | The path still exist on its
own, and I'm able to work with it.
| | 01:58 | So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to transform
this path to be a little bit more in perspective.
| | 02:04 | And so I am going to grab the Perspective Tool.
| | 02:06 | One of the things that's interesting
about all of the tools, whether it be the scale,
| | 02:10 | rotate, shear, move, whatever tool it might
be, you can actually target different objects
| | 02:14 | in the tool options.
| | 02:15 | So, by default, in the Transform section,
you'll notice that it has this button selected
| | 02:19 | where you're working with the Layer,
| | 02:21 | and if I were to use the Perspective Tool
on the layer, it would actually just change
| | 02:24 | the background, and the
path would remain as it is.
| | 02:28 | I could also switch it to Selection
if I had an active selection onscreen.
| | 02:32 | I don't currently, so I am
just going to select Path.
| | 02:36 | Once I have Path selected, watch what happens
when I come out here on the canvas. I can click,
| | 02:41 | and once I click, it
automatically brings up a perspective grid.
| | 02:44 | I can then use this grid to transform the
text back and forth, just like that, changing
| | 02:52 | the perspective. So you could place this on
the side of a building, or any number of things
| | 02:56 | that you wanted to do.
| | 02:57 | So let's just send this back a
little bit, something like that,
| | 03:01 | and once I click Transform, look what happens;
| | 03:04 | the text is now kind of off in
space, like it's floating away.
| | 03:07 | And so now what I can do is
go over to my Paths panel,
| | 03:11 | and inside of the Paths Panel, you have
several different options. You could say that you
| | 03:16 | want to convert this path to a selection,
| | 03:18 | and once you do that, it creates a
dancing selection around the path.
| | 03:22 | Now I'll temporarily hide the path, come
back over into my Layers panel, and I'll create
| | 03:26 | a brand new layer, and I'll just call this Path
Text, and hit OK. Still have my active selection,
| | 03:34 | and now what I can do is grab my paint
bucket tool over in the toolbar, select a color,
| | 03:40 | let's say I want red; hit OK.
| | 03:43 | And now I just come out, and click inside
the active selection, and now my text is filled
| | 03:49 | with that. Select, and
choose None, and there you go.
| | 03:53 | Now, one of the good things about this is,
because you made your selection from a path,
| | 03:57 | a path is made up of vectors, you
are going to get much cleaner lines
| | 04:00 | than if you just converted your text to a selection
before, or if you had just turned your text
| | 04:05 | into a layer, which is possible by right-clicking
on any text layer, and converting it to a layer,
| | 04:10 | because this way, it allows you to actually
base this filled section that you have here
| | 04:15 | off of a vector object.
| | 04:17 | This is not vector art,
| | 04:18 | so it cannot be scaled
infinitely without penalty,
| | 04:21 | so you want to make sure you get your
size and shape right, right off the bat.
| | 04:24 | But in general, it's a very good way of creating
some interesting text effects simply by converting
| | 04:30 | the text first to a path, manipulating the
path, and then coming back, converting that
| | 04:34 | into a selection, and then a layer, and then
filling it with a color, or you could even
| | 04:38 | stroke it with a brush or a color to
create some really interesting effects.
| | 04:42 | So I hope by now you have a better understanding
of why you would want to convert text into
| | 04:47 | paths, and also that you have a good understanding
of how to do that here inside of GIMP.
| | 04:51 | And then once you have done that, hopefully
I've given you a good idea of where to take
| | 04:55 | that to expand your creativity even further.
| | 04:57 |
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|
|
7. Using the Paint ToolsWorking with brushes| 00:00 | GIMP, just like any other image editing
application, has built-in brushing capabilities,
| | 00:04 | and in this movie, I am going to be discussing
the different brushes that we have available to us.
| | 00:08 | So, I am going to first start
off by creating a new document.
| | 00:11 | I am just going to choose
1024 × 768, and we will hit OK,
| | 00:14 | and that creates a brand new
document for me.
| | 00:16 | And you'll notice in the tools panel, I
actually have three different brushing type tools.
| | 00:20 | I have a Pencil Tool, which, as you can see
by the description, gives you a hard edge
| | 00:23 | painting using a brush.
| | 00:25 | Then you've got the Paintbrush Tool, which
paints a smooth stroke using a brush, and
| | 00:30 | then of course you've got the Airbrush Tool,
which paints using a brush with variable pressures.
| | 00:34 | And so those three are the basic
brush tools we have at our disposal.
| | 00:37 | We also have something called an Ink Tool,
and we'll talk about that in its own specific
| | 00:41 | movie a little bit later on.
| | 00:42 | But for now, I am just going to work with
the brushes here for just a moment, and show
| | 00:45 | you exactly how they work.
| | 00:46 | For the Pencil Tool, just click on that.
| | 00:48 | You are going to get some brush options,
and we will discuss the brush options panel in
| | 00:51 | depth in its own movie,
| | 00:52 | but for now, just grab the Pencil Tool,
select the color, let's say red, and hit OK.
| | 00:57 | And then just come out into the document, and
inside of the document, you just start drawing.
| | 01:02 | And my brush is actually set really big at
400 pixels, so let's undo that, and let's
| | 01:07 | shrink this back down. Maybe something
like 2 pixels will be okay. There we go.
| | 01:13 | And now drawing through, you can see exactly what
I'm doing here. Command+Z or Control+Z undoes that.
| | 01:19 | And you can just see here that it's really
easy just to freeform draw anything you want
| | 01:23 | inside of the window; pretty simple.
| | 01:25 | I would recommend to actually not drawing
with a mouse, if you can. I would recommend
| | 01:30 | going out and getting yourself some sort of
drawing tablet. If you are going to be doing
| | 01:33 | a lot of illustrations inside of GIMP, and
using the brush tools quite a bit, a drawing
| | 01:37 | tablet is very much a necessity when it
comes to that kind of stuff, because you can only
| | 01:42 | get so much control from a mouse.
| | 01:44 | When you get something like a drawing tablet,
it's going to make it so much easier to deal
| | 01:47 | with pressure, and also tracing around objects,
and things like that, because it's more natural
| | 01:52 | movement with a pencil type object than it is
to have your hand on a mouse trying to draw things.
| | 01:57 | Although you can get pretty good at drawing
with a mouse, it's still not going to be as
| | 02:01 | good as drawing with your
hand on a pencil type set.
| | 02:03 | So, we also have a brush tool which
is available to us inside of GIMP,
| | 02:07 | and the difference between the brush tool
and the Pencil Tool is the fact that the brush
| | 02:10 | tool has a differential in hardness. So you
can actually have a soft edge brush, versus
| | 02:15 | a hard edge brush. Where a pencil is always
going to have that really sharp, hard edge,
| | 02:20 | a brush can fade in and out.
| | 02:22 | You can also simulate things like
pen pressure with a brush as well.
| | 02:27 | And so the brush tool, very much similar to
the Pencil Tool; you just come in, you pick
| | 02:30 | the brush, you pick a color, and then you
come out into the document, and let's increase
| | 02:33 | the size of the brush this time to something
around maybe 100 pixels, somewhere thereabout,
| | 02:39 | and you just come out and draw.
| | 02:40 | Now, you will notice when I do that, that
it's very hard edged; it looks very pixilated.
| | 02:43 | That's because I'm using a hard edged brush.
| | 02:46 | So what I would want to do here is actually
pick one of these that kind of looks faded
| | 02:50 | over here in the brush panel.
| | 02:51 | So I pick one of those, and now I come out and
paint, and you'll notice that it's a lot smoother,
| | 02:55 | and it looks a lot better.
| | 02:56 | So you can draw pretty much the same way
you can with the Pencil Tool, but just a little
| | 03:01 | bit easier on the eyes, I think.
| | 03:03 | It's also great for working on layer masks,
gradually fading areas in and out on a layer mask.
| | 03:08 | It's great for retouching things, where you need to
airbrush and things, so pretty neat. Let's undo those,
| | 03:14 | and let's talk about the Airbrush Tool.
| | 03:15 | The Airbrush Tool, depending on how hard or
how long you press on an object, you can see
| | 03:19 | that it just kind of grows,
| | 03:21 | and then it can kind of fade out.
| | 03:23 | So it can vary in terms of intensity of the brush;
how long you linger on a spot really matters here.
| | 03:32 | So the Airbrush Tool can
also be a great retouching tool.
| | 03:35 | It can be great for working on layer masks and
different areas that you need to airbrush with.
| | 03:39 | Again, though, I think that the Airbrush Tool
works best if you're using some sort of pen
| | 03:43 | and tablet type situation, because simply
it just makes for a more natural operation.
| | 03:48 | Doing this with a mouse is just
not a natural thing that we do,
| | 03:52 | so you might want to
check into that if you can.
| | 03:54 | All in all, though, the brushes are
fairly simplistic here inside of GIMP.
| | 03:58 | It's the brush options, and all of the different
brushes that you have at your disposal that
| | 04:01 | really make them powerful.
| | 04:03 | Otherwise, it's just a basic
pick and click kind of system.
| | 04:05 | You pick the tool you want, and
then you click to make it work.
| | 04:08 | So pretty simple when it
comes to using the brushes,
| | 04:10 | but I just wanted to give you a basic introduction
to these before we dive headfirst into all
| | 04:15 | of the Tool Options to discuss
what you can really do with them.
| | 04:17 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adjusting brush attributes| 00:00 | Now that we have a basic understanding of what
the brushes are inside of GIMP, and how they
| | 00:04 | work in terms of just
operating the basic brush themselves,
| | 00:07 | let's talk about how we can customize the brush
settings to make them work a little bit better for us.
| | 00:12 | I am going to create a brand new document again.
| | 00:14 | Just File > New, and I am going to
start off 1024 × 768; that looks good.
| | 00:18 | I am just going to grab the brush Tool, the
Paintbrush Tool; you can access that with the
| | 00:21 | letter P on your keyboard.
| | 00:24 | When you do that, you're going to notice you get
this big Tool Options panel popping up down here.
| | 00:28 | So you've got all different types of things
you're able to change, and that's what we're
| | 00:31 | going to be over here. So the Mode.
| | 00:33 | This is going to the mode
in which you paint with,
| | 00:36 | so most of the time you're going to leave
this to Normal, but if you ever wanted to
| | 00:38 | do some special effect type painting, or if
you are doing a lot of retouching, you might
| | 00:42 | want to use some of these modes in order
to create some different types of effects.
| | 00:46 | These are the same type of blend modes that
you have associated with your layers, so they
| | 00:50 | work in much the same way.
| | 00:51 | You have lightening blend modes, darkening
blend modes, you also have contrast blend
| | 00:55 | modes, and so therefore that is what
the brush interaction would be as well.
| | 00:59 | Directly underneath that
you have the Opacity control.
| | 01:01 | That controls just how opaque
your brushstroke is going to be.
| | 01:05 | So if you reduce that back to 50%, you'd only
get 50% opacity on your one solid brushstroke.
| | 01:11 | You also have the ability
to change the brush itself,
| | 01:14 | so if you were to click this, you could pick any one of
the default brushes that are available to you in GIMP.
| | 01:19 | If you're not satisfied with this grid type
view, you can always switch to a list view,
| | 01:22 | which gives you a more accurate
read of what exactly each brush is.
| | 01:26 | It gives you a name, and also how big
the default brush size is for that brush.
| | 01:30 | That makes it really handy.
| | 01:31 | So anytime you want to exit out of here,
just click away from it, and it will close.
| | 01:35 | You can also control the size of
the brush directly underneath that.
| | 01:37 | For instance, here I could just type in a
number, so I could select this whole number right
| | 01:41 | here, and I could change that to something like 50,
and then hit Enter, and it would change the size to 50.
| | 01:47 | The Aspect Ratio of the brush; that's going to change
based on how far you drag this slider to left or right.
| | 01:52 | The Angle at which you're brushing; that can be
changed by dragging this to the left, or to the right.
| | 01:56 | You can also change things like
the Basic Dynamics, Basic Simple;
| | 02:01 | all these different things are different
settings that affect how the brush actually paints
| | 02:04 | as you're going through.
| | 02:05 | So for instance, if we wanted to do Pressure Opacity,
which is the default, that means it's going
| | 02:09 | to simulate pressure as you draw around, and
simulate that by changing the opacity of the
| | 02:14 | brush; you could do that.
| | 02:15 | You can also change the Dynamic Options;
how for the fade goes in and out, if the brush
| | 02:20 | repeats, if you wanted to reverse the angle
of the fading; you could also change the color
| | 02:25 | options of the brush. You can Apply Jitter;
set it to scatter the brush as you paint around.
| | 02:30 | You can smooth the stroke;
| | 02:31 | this supposed to be for
painting a little bit smoother.
| | 02:34 | In my estimation, I am not sure
how well that actually works.
| | 02:37 | Then finally, you can do incremental as well,
and that means that every stamp, every time
| | 02:42 | you hit this, it has its own Opacity value.
| | 02:45 | For the basic brushstroke, you are just
going to come out, and just make a stroke like.
| | 02:48 | If you were to change the size of the
brush by cranking that up, obviously it makes a
| | 02:52 | difference stroke, just like that.
| | 02:54 | Command+Z or Control+Z undoes that.
| | 02:56 | You can change that.
| | 02:57 | If you wanted to change something like the
Opacity of the brush, you can back that down
| | 03:01 | by clicking and dragging the slider this way.
| | 03:03 | Let's do something like 40%.
| | 03:07 | See how lighter that is compared to the other
one? And then you can crank that up, and it
| | 03:12 | gets full opacity, just like that.
| | 03:14 | If you wanted to change into one of these
other brushes; for instance, let's change
| | 03:18 | to something a little bit more
like a Star. Let's change that.
| | 03:24 | Let's go down here to the bottom, and open up
Dynamic options, and I'll scroll down a little bit.
| | 03:31 | I am going to Apply Jitter, and
let's increase that quite a bit.
| | 03:36 | Watch what happens here if
I come out with the Star.
| | 03:38 | See how it just kind of
spreads the star around as I go?
| | 03:41 | If I shrink the size of the brush -- let's scroll up
a little bit; it will be a little bit easier to see --
| | 03:46 | I'll shrink that down to something like
20, and then kind of scatter them around.
| | 03:50 | You can see how that works.
| | 03:51 | So that's the jitter that
we were talking about earlier.
| | 03:54 | You could also change the Aspect
Ratio, and the Angle of this as well.
| | 03:58 | So that's going to change how the stars look, just
like that. Totally different star just by changing those.
| | 04:04 | You can also turn on any of
these other options that you want.
| | 04:07 | It just creates some really interesting looks in
here, and that's all from this big Tool Options panel.
| | 04:13 | So take the time when you're using these brushes
to go in and tweak all of the different settings
| | 04:18 | that you have available to you, because you
never know what type of brush you're really going
| | 04:23 | do need until you get in here.
| | 04:25 | So start messing around with these settings.
Do some test strokes. If you want to open up
| | 04:28 | a brand new document like I've done here,
and do some test strokes to see exactly what's
| | 04:32 | it's going to look like before you put it
on the artwork that you're working on, that
| | 04:35 | would be a great idea, because at least then
you know what you're getting into before you
| | 04:39 | get into your document.
| | 04:40 | I would even suggest opening up a document
like this, doing it in black and white,
| | 04:45 | that way you get a full idea
of what it's going to look like,
| | 04:47 | then jump over into the document you're really
working on, and change the color, and worry
| | 04:51 | about that after the fact.
| | 04:54 | So hopefully now you have a better understanding
of what all of the Tool Options are associated
| | 04:58 | with brushes, and how you can use that to change
and alter the appearance of a brush, and change
| | 05:03 | the way it flows, and everything else, and
hopefully if that adds up another level of creativity
| | 05:08 | to the projects that you
are going to be working on.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a custom brush| 00:00 | Creating your own brushes inside of GIMP is
actually really fun way to extend your creativity,
| | 00:05 | and a great way to enhance the artwork
that you create inside of GIMP as well.
| | 00:09 | In this movie, I am going to be exploring how
to create your own custom brush, and then how
| | 00:12 | to load that back into GIMP, so you can then use
it in the projects that you might be working on.
| | 00:16 | So let's say, for instance,
that I had this piece of artwork.
| | 00:19 | It's just some handwriting that I have scribbled down
on piece of paper, and I want to turn this into a brush.
| | 00:23 | Maybe this is the tagline for a photo studio
I work at, or maybe this is our watermark, or
| | 00:27 | our logo, or maybe it's even my signature that
I've put down on a piece of paper that I want
| | 00:31 | to watermark photos with.
| | 00:33 | Whatever the case may be, creating your own
brush has a wide variety of uses, and it's
| | 00:38 | very, very easy to do
here inside a GIMP as well.
| | 00:41 | What you want to do is you want to make sure
that the brush is exactly a good representation
| | 00:45 | of what you want your brush to be.
| | 00:47 | So whatever you create here onscreen, you
want it to look exactly like what you want
| | 00:50 | the brush to look like.
| | 00:51 | If you want it to be black and
white, make it black and white.
| | 00:53 | If you want it to be transparent
around the edges, make it transparent.
| | 00:55 | If you want it to be different colors,
make it different colors. Totally up to you.
| | 00:59 | In this case, though, I am just
going to crop this down a little bit.
| | 01:02 | So I am going to grab the Crop Tool,
and just make a quick crop around this.
| | 01:08 | That way we get none of the
extra information that I don't need.
| | 01:11 | There we go, and I'll press Enter or Return.
| | 01:14 | I'm also going to scale it
down; this image is kind of big.
| | 01:16 | So I am just going to go to Image > Scale.
| | 01:19 | Let's make this about a 400 pixel wide
brush, and once I do that, I'll hit Scale.
| | 01:26 | If you want to see it at 100%, it'd be about that
big, and I can just press the number 1 to do that.
| | 01:31 | Now I am pretty much ready to go.
| | 01:32 | I am pretty much ready to turn it into a brush.
| | 01:34 | In order to do that; very, very easy to do:
just go to the File menu, and choose Export.
| | 01:39 | Once you do that, you are going to need to
find the brushes folder on your computer.
| | 01:44 | Now, on a Mac, it's actually in your user folder,
under Library, GIMP, the number 2.8, and then in brushes.
| | 01:50 | On a PC, it's going to be on your C drive, and
you can actually find exactly where it's located
| | 01:55 | in the preferences of GIMP.
| | 01:56 | So go to the GIMP menu, or the Edit
menu on a PC, and go to the Preferences.
| | 02:02 | Once you get into the Preferences dialog box,
there is a little section called Folders down
| | 02:05 | here, and you click Brushes, and this will actually
show you the file path for where the brushes are located.
| | 02:11 | So you can go find that folder, and this is
where you have to export the brushes to in
| | 02:15 | order for this to work.
| | 02:16 | So let's go to the File menu
now, and let's choose Export.
| | 02:21 | I am just going to export this out into
my Library folder, into the brushes folder.
| | 02:24 | I am just going to call this imagine_brush.
| | 02:27 | Then we are just going to make sure that
we have the .gbr extension on the end.
| | 02:31 | If you don't see .gbr,
| | 02:32 | go down here, and select GIMP
Brush from this, and hit Export.
| | 02:37 | This may bring up an external dialog
boxes that says Export Image as Brush.
| | 02:41 | It's going to ask you about the Spacing for
this, and basically the Spacing means how much
| | 02:46 | space is left before the next image is drawn.
| | 02:49 | So if you are doing a continuous brushstroke around
with this brush, how much space is in between this?
| | 02:54 | So really since I am just going to be doing a
one click fix for this, it doesn't really matter.
| | 02:58 | The Description here, we are going to
call this Imagination Brush, and hit Export.
| | 03:06 | That's going to export this out.
| | 03:07 | Now what I need to do is found my Brushes
panel over here on the right-hand, and I am
| | 03:11 | just going to refresh it.
| | 03:13 | When I refresh it, I should be able to look
in the list, and right towards the top should
| | 03:18 | be something called Imagination Brush.
| | 03:21 | If I create a new document File > New, and
I'll just pick something like 1024 × 768; hit OK.
| | 03:28 | I'm going to grab my brush tool, grab my
Imagination Brush, make sure that everything is still
| | 03:34 | where it needs to be.
| | 03:36 | And I'll change the size of this.
| | 03:38 | The brush is only
supposed to be 400 pixels wide.
| | 03:39 | So I'll change the brush
size to 400. There we go.
| | 03:43 | Once I click, I get the Imagination Brush,
just like that, and I can paint this around
| | 03:49 | as many times as I want.
| | 03:51 | You will notice that the square behind it causes
a little bit of overlap, which can be annoying.
| | 03:57 | If you wanted to avoid that, here's what you do.
| | 04:00 | I'll close this up; close without saving.
| | 04:03 | What you would actually have to do here is
use something like the Fuzzy Select Tool to
| | 04:07 | come back into this document, and you
could then make a selection around this text.
| | 04:14 | Then what you can do then is just simply
mask out all of this information, so you could go
| | 04:18 | up to Layer, you can choose Mask > Add Layer Mask,
and then you could say Based on Selection; hit Add.
| | 04:25 | If this happens, where it blanks out the text,
as opposed to the background, just undo that,
| | 04:30 | and then go up to your Select menu,
and choose Invert.
| | 04:34 | Then go back to Layer > Mask > Add Layer Mask >
Selection > Add; there we go.
| | 04:40 | Now, can always add to the selection at any time,
get the little ins and outs going here, but basically
| | 04:46 | I just want the background to be transparent.
| | 04:47 | So let's go to the File menu, and let's choose Export,
and we'll call this imagine_brush_trans, for transparent.
| | 05:00 | Same folder, export it out,
Imagine Brush transparent
| | 05:06 | for the Description, and hit Export.
| | 05:08 | It's going to export it out.
| | 05:10 | Now I can refresh, and I now have
my Imagine Brush transparent there.
| | 05:14 | If I create a new document, File > New,
and let's do 1024 again. There we go.
| | 05:20 | Now I'll grab my brush tool one more
time, and you can see now it comes out,
| | 05:24 | and you can actually see the
outline of it. There we go.
| | 05:26 | Now I am able to place these closer to each
other, and they can overlap without any penalty.
| | 05:34 | So, no matter what your use for a custom brush,
it is something that can add a lot of creative
| | 05:39 | flair to your pieces.
| | 05:40 | It's something that going to be great for
watermarking, and putting your finishing touches
| | 05:44 | on whatever it is you might be
working on here inside of GIMP.
| | 05:47 | So take some time, learn the ins and outs
of this brush tool, how to create your own;
| | 05:52 | build yourself a library of
brushes that you use most often.
| | 05:55 | You'll be really glad you did, because it
makes it so much easier to just run in
| | 05:58 | and grab a brush, versus trying to bring in a logo
or watermark each and every time you create a piece.
| | 06:03 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Ink tool| 00:00 | In addition to the regular brush tools inside of GIMP,
we also have access to something called the Ink Tool.
| | 00:05 | The Ink Tool is really neat, because it simulates
calligraphy, and this is actually something
| | 00:10 | that I was interested in when I was in college,
and even in high school, and I really loved
| | 00:15 | the look of calligraphy.
| | 00:17 | GIMP actually provides you with a nice way to
sort of replicate calligraphy in this digital space.
| | 00:23 | Now, I will say that it works a lot better if
you are using a pen and tablet for drawing,
| | 00:28 | but you can get some really nice
results just by using a mouse as well.
| | 00:32 | So let's go ahead and create a brand
new document here by going to File > New.
| | 00:34 | It doesn't matter how big or how small it is.
| | 00:37 | Let's switch to the Ink Tool.
| | 00:38 | You can get to that by hitting letter K on
your keyboard, or simply by clicking on it here
| | 00:42 | in the Tools panel.
| | 00:43 | Once you do that, you're
going to set up your options,
| | 00:46 | the first of which you can change
is the Angle.
| | 00:49 | You can also change the Size.
| | 00:51 | You can also change the Tilt of this,
| | 00:53 | so I like to crank this up quite a bit; something like
.6, and the Speed at which you are going to be using this.
| | 01:00 | Then you also have the ability
to change the brush tip Shape;
| | 01:03 | you have Circle, Square, and Diamond.
| | 01:05 | I actually like Diamond the best.
| | 01:07 | So right now I have got my Size at 16, my
Angle at 25, my Sensitivity is set to a
| | 01:13 | Size of 1, Tilt at point .6,
and Speed of .85.
| | 01:17 | So when I come out here, I can now come out
and just start drawing, and you see that it
| | 01:21 | gets sort of this calligraphy look to it.
| | 01:24 | So there is my name, and again, not exactly
a representation of my handwriting, but if
| | 01:29 | you take it slow, you can
do some really neat stuff.
| | 01:31 | So let's Undo this, and let's go like this.
| | 01:35 | So you see there you get some
nice brush dynamics on this thing.
| | 01:40 | It's almost like you're
holding a calligraphy pen.
| | 01:42 | It does work better if you
reduce the size, I think, a little bit.
| | 01:45 | 16 might have been a little big.
| | 01:47 | So you could just come in, and just
make all different types of things.
| | 01:54 | You know, that could be, like, a signature that
I sign my work with, or something like that
| | 01:57 | with, but it's not really a tool that you
are going to be using a lot, I don't think.
| | 02:01 | It's a great little novelty tool that
allows you to add just a little bit of something
| | 02:04 | extra to what you're doing.
| | 02:06 | So, I just wanted to take a minute or
two to show you exactly how it works.
| | 02:10 | It works best if you just come in, start playing
around with the options, and then just start
| | 02:14 | marking some things down.
| | 02:15 | I find this is great for sketching, this is
great for, like I said, signatures, and you can
| | 02:19 | also turn that signature into its own
custom brush, which is something I showed how to
| | 02:23 | do in a previous movie in this chapter.
| | 02:26 | So using the Ink Tool, again, you are not
going to use it all the time, but it is a
| | 02:30 | really neat addition,
| | 02:31 | so I thought I'd point it out to you.
| | 02:32 | So just take some time, play around
with it, and see what you can come up with.
| | 02:35 |
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| Working with gradient fills| 00:00 | In addition to the basic painting tools
that we have available to us, and the ability to
| | 00:04 | fill in with solid colors, we also have the
ability to fill objects and selections in
| | 00:09 | with gradient colors as well.
| | 00:11 | If you are not familiar with what a gradient is,
it's basically a color swatch that fades from
| | 00:15 | one color to another.
| | 00:17 | So, say, fade from black to white, or
from red to green, or from yellow to blue.
| | 00:22 | So it's a really interesting way of filling things
up, and it can create some really cool effects as well.
| | 00:28 | I am going to start off by creating a brand
new document here by going to File > New, and once
| | 00:32 | I do that, I'm going to
switch to the gradient tool.
| | 00:35 | The gradient tool is
located right in the Tools panel.
| | 00:38 | You can get it by pressing the letter L on
your keyboard, or by clicking on in the Tools
| | 00:42 | panel, and I am just going to create a basic
gradient here by coming up to the top, and
| | 00:46 | clicking and dragging down.
| | 00:48 | When you click and drag down, wherever you
start the gradient, that's where the beginning
| | 00:52 | of the gradient is going to start.
| | 00:54 | Wherever you end the gradient, wherever you release
your mouse, that is where the gradient is going to end.
| | 00:59 | Right now you can see over on the left-hand side
that my gradient is going to go from black to white.
| | 01:03 | So theoretically, it should start at complete
black at the very top, and end at the complete
| | 01:07 | white at the very bottom.
| | 01:08 | So when I release my mouse, you'll have to
give this some time to render, and it will vary
| | 01:12 | based on your machine.
| | 01:14 | Once the gradient renders, though, you will see that
it should fade from black to white, just like this.
| | 01:19 | You can go straight up and down;
you can go diagonally, like this.
| | 01:23 | Again, your mileage may have vary on how long
this takes to process, but once it does, you
| | 01:26 | can see that it creates a
really nice faded look right there.
| | 01:29 | This could be great for, like, backdrops, or
adding depth to different designs, or backgrounds
| | 01:34 | for applications, or Web sites, or
whatever it is you might be working on.
| | 01:38 | Gradients are a great way to add a
little bit of something extra to that.
| | 01:42 | Now, in the Tool Options, you get the ability
to change the Blend, and that's actually what
| | 01:46 | this tool is called in GIMP.
| | 01:47 | It's called the Blend Tool, because you're
blending two colors together, but you're actually
| | 01:51 | creating a gradient swatch.
| | 01:53 | So here you can pick between all the
different gradients that are available to you.
| | 01:56 | If you click on this, you actually
see the gradients that are available.
| | 02:00 | So, they have some really interesting ones.
| | 02:02 | One of my favorites is the blue to green.
| | 02:04 | I'll click and drag down, so
you can see what this looks like.
| | 02:07 | Again, it will take some time to render.
| | 02:08 | It's going to have to
process a lot of color information.
| | 02:12 | Once that renders through, though, you are going
to see that it starts out with this dark blue,
| | 02:15 | moves into sort of a neutral blue here in
the middle, and then fades slowly to green.
| | 02:19 | Pretty nice little fade, though.
| | 02:20 | Nice little effect that it gives you.
| | 02:23 | You can also choose the shape of the gradient
directly underneath that, so you can pick something
| | 02:26 | like Bi-linear, Radial, Square, Conical --
either symmetric, or asymmetric -- you can get it Shaped.
| | 02:33 | You can also do Spiral towards the bottom.
| | 02:36 | So let's check out one of the spirals.
| | 02:37 | Let's do a counterclockwise Spiral, and I'll
just do a quick gradient right here in the middle.
| | 02:42 | Click and release; something kind a like this.
| | 02:44 | When I do that, this is going to create a really
interesting spiral pattern across our document
| | 02:49 | using the colors that we specified, and when
it renders, you see it create something kind
| | 02:54 | a like that, which is pretty neat.
| | 02:55 | Now, in addition to just doing these broad
strokes that go across the entire background,
| | 03:00 | you can also fill objects with a gradient as well.
| | 03:03 | So if I wanted to, I could grab, let's say, the
elliptical select tool here, and I could draw out a circle.
| | 03:09 | If I wanted to fill this circle
with its own gradient, I could do so.
| | 03:12 | I'll create a brand new layer on top of this layer,
just to have an extra piece, so I can move this around.
| | 03:19 | What I can do now is grab the Blend Tool, or
the gradient tool, and I can then, let's pick
| | 03:24 | a different gradient.
| | 03:25 | This time let's do
something like the Golden gradient.
| | 03:30 | That looks pretty neat. And we will do the
spiral gradient, just to make it look cool,
| | 03:34 | and we will just go right inside
this selection, click, and drag.
| | 03:38 | That's going to go take a minute to render.
| | 03:39 | Once it renders, you should
see the gradient. There we go.
| | 03:43 | There is my spiral
gradient inside of that circle.
| | 03:46 | Since I put this on its own layer, I can
now switch to the Move Tool, go to Select, and
| | 03:50 | choose None, and I can move this layer
independently of the original gradient as well.
| | 03:57 | Now, in addition to filling objects
like that, you can also fill text.
| | 04:01 | It's a little bit of a hack in order
to do it, but it is possible to do.
| | 04:04 | So let's grab the Text Tool really quick, and
I'll just type out HELLO WORLD, and we'll increase
| | 04:13 | the size of this text quite a bit; something
like 80. And then I am also going to change
| | 04:20 | the Font, so you can actually
see this a little bit better.
| | 04:24 | So let's change this to Impact.
| | 04:26 | That's a good font.
| | 04:27 | There we go; Impact. And maybe we even push
the size a little bit more. There we go.
| | 04:33 | So let's say that I wanted to
fill this text with a gradient.
| | 04:35 | Right now it's just filled black.
| | 04:37 | What I would have to do is grab my Text Tool, select
the Text, right-click on it, and choose Path from Text.
| | 04:47 | That creates a new path.
| | 04:50 | If you are unaware of what a path is,
you can go watch the chapter on paths;
| | 04:53 | that will explain exactly what that is.
| | 04:55 | Now I can look in my Paths
panel; there is my new path.
| | 04:57 | I'll turn it on, so we can see it.
| | 05:00 | Go back, and I can
actually throw this layer away.
| | 05:02 | I'll create a brand new layer, a blank layer,
and I'll go back over into the Paths panel.
| | 05:09 | This time I'm going to turn the path into
a selection by clicking this button here.
| | 05:14 | I can then throw the path away, grab my
Blend Tool, come down, let's select a different
| | 05:21 | gradient this time; select
something like the Yellow Orange gradient.
| | 05:29 | Let's click and drag across, and as you can
see there, it just kind of fills it in.
| | 05:35 | There we go; a little spiral there.
| | 05:38 | Select > None, and I can grab my a Move Tool, and I
can move this anywhere I want. So there we go.
| | 05:47 | So now hopefully you have seen how to fill
in not only your background layers, but also
| | 05:52 | you're shapes, and your text using this gradient
tool, and also how to create some really interesting
| | 05:58 | looks using this gradient tool as well.
| | 06:01 | So as you continue to expand your creative
mind here inside of GIMP, take the time to use
| | 06:05 | this Blend Tool to
create some gradient swatches.
| | 06:08 | You'll be glad you did, because you can create
some subtle depth and texture to your designs
| | 06:12 | that wouldn't otherwise
be there by using this tool.
| | 06:15 |
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| Working with pattern fills| 00:00 | In addition to using gradients to fill objects
and backgrounds here inside of GIMP, you also
| | 00:04 | have the ability to use pattern fills as well.
| | 00:08 | Pattern fills are actually really easy to do.
| | 00:10 | Let's go up to the File menu, and choose New.
| | 00:12 | We'll create a brand new blank document here.
| | 00:14 | I'm going to also come over here to the right,
and click on the Patterns tab, so you can see
| | 00:19 | the patterns that are available to us.
| | 00:21 | In the Patterns tab, in order to utilize
these, all you have to do is just click and drag
| | 00:25 | one over, and it will fill the object that
you have with whatever pattern you choose.
| | 00:31 | So let's undo that, and let's
pick one of these other ones.
| | 00:33 | I think the wood textures
actually look really nice.
| | 00:36 | In the age were skeuomorphic design is
all the rage, using a pattern like this would
| | 00:41 | be something that a lot of
people would want to know how to do.
| | 00:43 | Now, you can also, in addition to using the
patterns to fill large areas, you can also
| | 00:48 | use them to fill other areas as
well, like selections and whatnot.
| | 00:52 | So if were to make a selection on this document,
like so, and I'll create a new layer in the
| | 00:58 | Layers panel, just so we can see
this, and work with independently.
| | 01:01 | I could then fill that selection with a pattern,
just like so, and then select None, grab my
| | 01:09 | Move Tool, and you see here I have the ability to
move this object anywhere I see fit, just like that.
| | 01:16 | Now, you'll also notice that when you have
your paint bucket tool selected that you get
| | 01:21 | the option to fill with a color, a
background color, or a Pattern fill.
| | 01:27 | Here you can actually pick the patterns
here, and this way you can have this on a tool.
| | 01:32 | But you can actually fill with patterns by
doing the click and drag method, like I showed
| | 01:36 | you, anytime you want.
| | 01:37 | You don't need to have this Tool selected.
| | 01:39 | So in addition to using the tool, you could
also use the click and drag method that I
| | 01:43 | have already shown you.
| | 01:44 | Now, you can also apply pattern fills to things like
text, but much like gradients, it's a bit of a hack.
| | 01:51 | So let's go ahead now, and I'll fill the
Background layer with black really quickly here.
| | 01:56 | I did that with Command+Comma or Control+Comma
on my keyboard, and that actually just fills with
| | 02:03 | your foreground color, which black
happened to be in my foreground color.
| | 02:06 | What I am going to do now is just grab the
Text Tool, and I'm going to draw out a box,
| | 02:12 | and type out PATTERN.
| | 02:13 | You might not able to see
that, because it's black.
| | 02:16 | I'll switch that to white, so you can
actually see what's going on. There we go.
| | 02:19 | There is the word PATTERN, and let's increase the
Size of the text quite a bit; something like 185.
| | 02:25 | Once I do that, you have to
first convert the text to a path.
| | 02:29 | So right-click on the text while
it's selected, and choose Path from Text.
| | 02:32 | You can then throw the text away.
| | 02:34 | You don't need it anymore.
| | 02:36 | Go over in to the Paths panels, turn on the
path, so you can see it, and then go down and
| | 02:41 | choose Path to Selection.
| | 02:45 | Once you do that, you get an
active selection around it.
| | 02:47 | You can then take any one of these pattern
fills, and drag it over, and drop it into the
| | 02:53 | text, and it then fills
that text with that pattern.
| | 02:56 | So now I can go to Select, and choose None,
and there we have our pattern filled text.
| | 03:01 | If I go back over the Layers panel, you'll
notice that since I didn't create a new layer
| | 03:05 | first, this is now merged
with the Background layer.
| | 03:07 | So if I try to move this, it
moves with the Background layer.
| | 03:10 | So what I'll have to do is Command+Z or
Control+Z until I get back to before I filled it.
| | 03:16 | I'll create a brand new layer on top,
| | 03:19 | then let's fill that with a pattern again.
| | 03:21 | It doesn't matter what pattern you choose.
| | 03:23 | I'll just pick something like
this kind of stone pattern here.
| | 03:26 | There we go. And Select > None.
| | 03:30 | Go back over to the paths.
| | 03:31 | You can throw that path away;
| | 03:32 | you don't need it anymore.
| | 03:33 | Grab your Move Tool, and now this can be
moved independently of everything else.
| | 03:40 | So, much the same way that gradients work, you
have to do a little bit of a hack in order
| | 03:43 | to apply it to text, but otherwise, it's as
simple as clicking and dragging something over onto
| | 03:48 | your document, or into your selection to fill
it with any one of the pattern fills that are
| | 03:53 | available to you in this application.
| | 03:55 |
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|
|
8. Fixing Image FlawsUsing dodge and burn tools| 00:00 | One of the oldest ways to add a little something
to a photograph when it comes to retouching
| | 00:04 | is to utilize a tool known as dodge and burn.
| | 00:08 | This is a technique that has
been used for years in photography,
| | 00:12 | and it's been done many different ways.
| | 00:14 | In the old darkroom days, you had to actually
use light and masking to actually make it work.
| | 00:19 | Then in programs like GIMP, and Photoshop, and
things like that, they developed digital tools
| | 00:23 | that allow us to do it based on a
brushstroke, which makes it so much easier.
| | 00:27 | If you don't know what dodge and burn means,
basically it just means selectively lightening
| | 00:31 | or darkening different areas of a
photo using this brush-like technique.
| | 00:37 | In GIMP, the tool is actually located here.
| | 00:39 | It's the Dodge/Burn Tool, and it tells you that
it selectively lightens or darkens using a brush.
| | 00:45 | When you pick the tool initially, you get a
bunch of Tool Options down here at the bottom,
| | 00:49 | where you can set the different
options for how you're going to use the tool.
| | 00:52 | Everything from the brush Hardness, to the
Size, the Aspect Ratio, the Angle, whether
| | 00:57 | or not you want use Pressure Opacity, you've also
got the ability to choose if you're dodging or burning.
| | 01:03 | In which case, if you are dodging,
you're lightening up the photo.
| | 01:05 | If you're burning,
you're darkening up the photo.
| | 01:07 | You have also got the ability to change
what Range of tones you are affecting with your
| | 01:11 | brushstrokes, and at the bottom,
you have got your Exposure control.
| | 01:15 | Let's start at the top,
and work our way down here.
| | 01:17 | So for this, I want it at 100% Opacity.
| | 01:19 | My Size, I am going to
change this a little bit.
| | 01:22 | I want it somewhere around probably
80 pixels should be enough for this.
| | 01:26 | Then I'm going to scroll down here.
| | 01:27 | I want to make sure first that I'm doing the Burn, and
I am going to only Burn on the Shadows for right now.
| | 01:33 | I'm going to I come out here into my document,
and I'm going to create a duplicate of this
| | 01:37 | layer, just so I have a
before and after to show you.
| | 01:39 | So I am going to create this duplicate here,
and I am just going to call this one Burn.
| | 01:45 | Once I do that, I'm now able to burn independently
on this Layer without affecting the original photo.
| | 01:50 | So now what I'm going to do is just come out
here in the creases of the jacket I am just
| | 01:54 | going to selectively burn different areas
of that, sort of enhance those creases, make
| | 01:59 | them look a little deeper,
make them look a little darker.
| | 02:02 | I'll just go through different areas that
I think need a little bit more definition,
| | 02:05 | and I am just adding brushstroke to this.
| | 02:08 | As you can see, as I'm brushing over these, the
shadow areas are the only ones being affected.
| | 02:12 | I am not popping the highlights at all. I
am just affecting the shadow areas; giving
| | 02:16 | a little bit more depth to this jacket.
| | 02:18 | I might even burn a little
bit around the wrists here.
| | 02:22 | It looks like it's a little
hot in there. There we go.
| | 02:26 | I can also come out here and brush a little
bit into the shadow detail of the fur, and
| | 02:31 | maybe even around hair;
give that a little more depth.
| | 02:34 | If I want to shrink the size of a brush, or increase
the size of my brush, I can use the bracket
| | 02:39 | keys on the keyboard. So, the left bracket
key will decrease the size of the brush.
| | 02:42 | I can come here and add a little bit
of definition to the hands, a little bit.
| | 02:47 | Maybe a little more around the face; a little
bit more definition in there. There we go.
| | 02:52 | Maybe in the eyes.
| | 02:54 | Just selective burning.
| | 02:56 | So if I show you here, it might not look like it
did a whole lot, but watch the before and after.
| | 03:00 | Here's before, and after.
| | 03:02 | See the amount of depth that I've created here, just
by adding those few little brushstrokes with that?
| | 03:08 | Now, I can also do a little bit of highlight with
this as well by using something called the Dodge tool.
| | 03:14 | So for instance, let's grab the Dodge tool.
| | 03:16 | I'll just switch to it here, and I'm going
to only focus on the midtones for right now.
| | 03:21 | Maybe I want to add a little bit of highlighting
around the hand here, maybe a little bit around here;
| | 03:28 | I definitely want to grow the size of my brush a
little bit, and pop some of the midtone highlights
| | 03:33 | around in the here. Give that a little bit
more of a light effect up in there. There we go.
| | 03:43 | I might even shrink the size my brush, and
| | 03:45 | come in here; maybe I want the highlight on this
to be little brighter down here on the jacket.
| | 03:49 | So I can come in here, and just kind
brighten up that highlight spot. Same way here.
| | 03:53 | I can come in and I can hit all these different
little highlight areas to give them a little
| | 03:57 | more pop, just depending on what I
want them to look like in the end.
| | 04:02 | I am just tracing the
highlight lines, basically,
| | 04:06 | as we go through here, and
I'm careful not to overdo it.
| | 04:09 | I don't want it to look fake, but
just highlighting some of these.
| | 04:14 | So again, here is before.
| | 04:16 | The original photo wasn't bad, but now it
almost looks flat, comparatively speaking.
| | 04:21 | So you can go through here, and you
can really do some awesome stuff.
| | 04:25 | If I come into the eyes, I can
actually work only on the highlights.
| | 04:28 | I can come into the eyes, shrink this
down a little bit, and I can come in, and
| | 04:33 | enhance the eyes just a
little bit with that as well.
| | 04:37 | So let's just kind of increase the
whites of the eyes a little bit.
| | 04:44 | Here's before, after; just a little
to pop with the eyes. There we go.
| | 04:49 | You see just what a powerful difference this
little tool can make in a very short amount
| | 04:53 | of time, just by selectively
dodging and burning around on this photo.
| | 04:59 | So let's zoom out and see the
full one more time: before, and after.
| | 05:05 | So again, remember, it's
just this tool right here.
| | 05:07 | You get the option to pick all of the different
things that are associated with it in the options
| | 05:11 | panel, and then towards the bottom, you get
the real meat and potatoes of it; whether or
| | 05:15 | not you're dodging or burning, and
then what tonal range you want to affect.
| | 05:19 | In the end, the Exposure is going to be the
setting that matters the most, because that's
| | 05:23 | the intensity of this.
| | 05:25 | If I were to, let's say, dodge this, work on
only the highlights, and then crank the Exposure
| | 05:32 | up, watch what happens when I come out here.
| | 05:34 | I'll increase the Size of the brush, so
you can actually see what's going on.
| | 05:37 | Let me go up here, and increase the Size
of the brush quite a bit. There we go.
| | 05:43 | Maybe not that much. There we go.
| | 05:46 | When I do that, see how
that really just overdoes it?
| | 05:49 | It really brightens up.
| | 05:51 | If I get up here in the face, I will wash
that out pretty quickly just by doing that.
| | 05:54 | So you have to watch your intensity on that, but
still a very powerful tool when you used correctly.
| | 06:02 | So you can come in, and just add little
highlights different places, and really start
| | 06:06 | to add depth, and brighten
up an otherwise dull photo.
| | 06:10 | So again, this is the Dodge/Burn Tool inside
of GIMP. Remember to always work on that
| | 06:15 | duplicate layer, so you can always get back
to the original, or mix and match the two using
| | 06:19 | layer masks to get the perfect composition.
| | 06:22 |
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| Using blur and sharpen tools| 00:00 | Even though we have the ability to blur
and sharpen images using filters, chances are
| | 00:06 | you're going to want a little bit more control over
where you blur, and where you sharpen your images.
| | 00:12 | And so lucky for you, we have a tool inside
of GIMP that allows you to do this based upon
| | 00:16 | a brushstroke, and it's actually located right
here: it's called the Blur/Sharpen Tool, and
| | 00:20 | it allows you selectively
blur or unblur using a brush.
| | 00:24 | And so when you select this tool, you get
all these options down here, like the Size
| | 00:28 | of the brush, you also get to control things
like whether or not you're blurring or sharpening,
| | 00:33 | and then the Rate at which
you are blurring or sharpening.
| | 00:35 | So in this case, I am going to choose Sharpen
for the first part of this, and I am going
| | 00:38 | to create a new layer on top of my other layer.
| | 00:41 | I am going to duplicate it, actually, by clicking on
this button, and I am just going to call this Blur.
| | 00:46 | Then we'll create another new layer on top
of that, and we are going to call this Sharpen.
| | 00:52 | And I'll turn off the Blur layer for
now, and only work on the sharpening layer.
| | 00:54 | And I am going to increase the size of my
brush by holding down the Right Bracket key
| | 00:58 | on my keyboard; that just increases
the Size of my brush significantly.
| | 01:02 | I'm also going to over-sharpen this image,
so you get an idea of exactly what I'm doing.
| | 01:06 | So I am going to crank up the Rate to about 80.
| | 01:10 | And then what we are going to do is come out
into the photograph, and on the photo, I am
| | 01:12 | going to zoom in by using Shift+Plus, and
then I am going to sharpen the hair all around
| | 01:17 | here, and the fur on the right-hand side.
| | 01:19 | And so in order to do that -- let's increase
the Size of the brush just a little bit more --
| | 01:22 | I am just going to go through, and I am
working on the Sharpen layer, and I am just going
| | 01:27 | to sharpen this area.
| | 01:30 | And if it's not coming through enough, just
increase the Rate at which you are sharpening,
| | 01:39 | and you will notice you start to introduce a
lot of noise into the photo, and that's okay,
| | 01:43 | because we are going to tone that back a little bit
later on. We just want to get some definition in here.
| | 01:47 | There we go.
| | 01:48 | So I am really overdoing it.
| | 01:50 | And that's okay, because we can
always go in and fix that later.
| | 01:55 | And if you don't really see what we're doing,
go over to your Layers panel, temporarily
| | 01:59 | turn off this layer.
| | 02:00 | Here is before and here is after.
| | 02:02 | As you can see, it just kind of adds a little bit
of sharpening to the areas that we are working on.
| | 02:08 | And I may also do this in some of the creases
on her jacket. Also right in here, add a little
| | 02:16 | bit of definition to the sleeves.
Maybe across her hands a little bit.
| | 02:23 | I am going to leave the face alone, because
that's where I am going to be blurring things
| | 02:25 | a little bit later.
| | 02:27 | So there we go; just adding a little
bit of overdone sharpening to everything.
| | 02:32 | Just select that, and I may go up in here
and add some sharpening to this as well.
| | 02:36 | And you can see, I am just doing this with
a brush. Very simple, very easy. All right!
| | 02:40 | So there is my Sharpen layer;
very much over-sharpened.
| | 02:43 | I do not recommend doing this.
| | 02:44 | I have introduced way too much noise,
a lot of artifacts; it doesn't look good.
| | 02:47 | That's okay, though. I'll just
temporarily turn that off.
| | 02:49 | You can see the difference;
before, and after.
| | 02:52 | And then we have got our Blur layer
here; I am going to turn that back on.
| | 02:55 | You should see no difference in the
photo when you turn the Blur layer on.
| | 02:59 | Then go over here and select the Blur from
the Convolve Type over here in the Tool Options.
| | 03:04 | I am going to decrease the
Blur amount to something like 75.
| | 03:09 | That should be around about what I need.
| | 03:11 | I may they also shrink the size of my brush
just a little bit, so come out in the image
| | 03:15 | window, click, and then you can shrink the
size of your brush using the Left Bracket key.
| | 03:20 | And basically what I am going to do here
is I am going to blur out her face, and I am
| | 03:22 | going to do that just by painting across the
face, and you will notice the face gets really
| | 03:28 | blurry, really quickly, and that's okay.
| | 03:32 | That's exactly what I want.
| | 03:33 | I want to blur out the face.
| | 03:34 | I am basically going to soften
the skin using the Blur tool.
| | 03:38 | And so now we are just blurring
this out pretty much all over.
| | 03:43 | I want to smooth out all the rough patches,
anything like that; any blemishes that we
| | 03:47 | see, we can smooth out in this way as well.
| | 03:50 | And then I may also make a pass over the
hands, something like that, just to kind of give
| | 03:56 | them a little bit more of a softer appearance.
| | 03:58 | And so now that we have done that, we have now
sharpened and blurred the photo independently.
| | 04:03 | We have got a Blur layer, and a Sharpen layer.
| | 04:04 | The key now is to bring back the areas that
we don't want effected by the Blur, or by the
| | 04:09 | Sharpen. For instance, on her face, I don't
want the eyes, the eyebrows, or the lines around
| | 04:13 | the nose, or the mouth to be effected
by this blurriness that I've introduced.
| | 04:17 | And so what I want to do now
is add a layer mask to this.
| | 04:20 | So let's go up to the Layer menu, let's go
down to Mask, and let's choose Add Layer Mask.
| | 04:25 | And once I get Add Layer Mask on, I am going
to choose Black (full transparency), and make
| | 04:30 | sure Invert Mask is not
checked, and then hit Add.
| | 04:33 | You should see the original photo come right
back into play, and if I switch to my brush
| | 04:37 | tool now, and I make sure that I'm painting
with white, and come out here on the photo --
| | 04:44 | I want to make sure also that I am working
on the layer mask, so I will click on that --
| | 04:47 | you can come out here, and you can just sort
of brush back in the blur that you had before,
| | 04:55 | and this is going to really soften up the
edges of whatever it is you're painting across.
| | 05:00 | And it's okay if you make some
mistakes; you can always go in and fix that.
| | 05:03 | So I am just going across everything right
now, bringing back everything blurry. Okay.
| | 05:08 | So now everything is blurry.
| | 05:11 | Let's zoom in a few times, so I can see exactly
what I am doing, and I'll pan over just a little bit.
| | 05:17 | Shrink the size of your brush considerably
after you do that, and switch the color over
| | 05:23 | to black, and then you can just brush back
in the areas that you want to be in focus:
| | 05:29 | eyebrows, eyes, creases around the nose,
bring back in the mouth. There we go.
| | 05:37 | And so here is before, and after.
| | 05:39 | So we have got a nice skin
softening effect happening there.
| | 05:42 | Now, as for the Sharpening layer, I am going
to do basically the same thing on this one.
| | 05:46 | So I am just going to turn it on, see the
over sharpened mess that we created, and what
| | 05:51 | I am going to do here, since the only thing
I did basically is sharpen the image, and I
| | 05:56 | didn't really distort it -- let's zoom
out a few times, so you can see this --
| | 05:59 | I am just going to take this Sharpen layer,
and I am going to reduce the Opacity; something
| | 06:04 | like 50% works good. There we go, 50%.
| | 06:07 | Now watch this; here's before, and after.
Just adds some small highlights to the areas.
| | 06:14 | And so if I turn both of these off, here is
before completely, and then smooth skin, sharpened
| | 06:21 | highlights, so there you have it.
| | 06:24 | Using these two small brush features can
really enhance a photo in ways you probably never
| | 06:29 | thought possible when you combine
that with opacity and layer masking.
| | 06:33 | So, use these to selectively blur
and sharpen different areas of a photo.
| | 06:37 | Again, be careful not to overdo it.
| | 06:40 | That's what a lot of people tend to do; they tend to
do overdo when they are using these types of tools,
| | 06:44 | but once you get those in place, you can
then always refine what you have done by using
| | 06:49 | layer masks and opacity to really dial it
in, and get exactly what you're looking for.
| | 06:53 |
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| Using the Clone tool| 00:00 | Restoring photographs that have been damaged,
or removing unwanted photographs from images
| | 00:05 | is sometimes a very tedious task, but luckily
for us, in the digital age, we have the ability
| | 00:10 | to remove things and add things to photos
by using tools like a Clone Tool that really
| | 00:16 | make it a lot easier than it used to be.
| | 00:19 | And so in GIMP, in order to use something called
the Clone Tool, basically what you are going
| | 00:22 | to do is select it from your Tools
panel over here on the left-hand side.
| | 00:26 | It's this little stamp looking icon right here.
| | 00:28 | and basically what this allows you to do
is copy different areas of an image to apply
| | 00:33 | it to another area of the image.
| | 00:35 | So you can see, I've got open this very old
photograph here, and it's actually got some
| | 00:38 | areas that are missing.
| | 00:40 | The corner down here is missing, the edge
down here's been cut off, there is a little
| | 00:43 | bit missing from the top,
| | 00:45 | and so what I want to do is be able to
fill in these areas with content that actually
| | 00:50 | looks like the rest of the photo.
| | 00:51 | I don't want to have to crop out different
areas of the photo simply because I'm missing
| | 00:55 | these smaller areas of information.
| | 00:58 | And so in order to restore these areas, what
I'm going to do is use the Clone Tool to do that.
| | 01:03 | And so it's very easy to use the Clone Tool,
and I am not even going to worry about any
| | 01:07 | of the settings over here.
| | 01:08 | You can adjust these a little bit later on
if you want to, but for right now, let's just
| | 01:11 | worry about the basic
operations of how this thing works.
| | 01:14 | First and foremost, you have to set something
called a sample point when you're dealing
| | 01:19 | with the Clone Tool.
| | 01:20 | This tells the Clone Tool where to look when
you're using it, so that it can fill in information
| | 01:25 | as you are brushing across.
| | 01:26 | So for instance, right down here in the bottom,
I want to fill in this little strip of area
| | 01:30 | that's missing here.
| | 01:31 | What I;m going to do is just come right next
to it, and I'm going to position the cursor
| | 01:34 | where the little circle is
located right next to that.
| | 01:37 | I am going to hold down the Command key on
Mac, the Control key on PC, and click one time.
| | 01:42 | And you are going to notice that once I do
that, I now have a little point when I move
| | 01:45 | my mouse away from it.
| | 01:46 | The point indicates this is where
you are going to be cloning from.
| | 01:49 | And so now I can come right here, and
watch what happens as I start to brush upward.
| | 01:53 | I just click, and brush up; the clone point
follows me all the way up, and I just fill
| | 01:59 | in information as I go.
| | 02:01 | And when I release my mouse, it looks as
if nothing was ever missing from that area.
| | 02:05 | The same holds true down
here on the left-hand side.
| | 02:08 | I'll come right next to this, and I'll actually
scoot over a little bit to have a little bit
| | 02:11 | more room, and I'll hold down the Command key
on Mac, Control key on PC, click to set my sample
| | 02:17 | point, and then come over here, and I'll
simply brush across, up, over, and fill in all of
| | 02:24 | that information, just like so.
| | 02:26 | It looks like it was
never missing to begin with.
| | 02:29 | And finally, let's go up here to the top,
and let's set a sample point just below where
| | 02:33 | it's missing, and we'll just
go straight across, like so.
| | 02:39 | Now, you'll notice when I do that, that
I actually set the wrong sample point.
| | 02:43 | If you see down here at the bottom, my
sample point actually got set down here.
| | 02:46 | I didn't set it well enough
up top, so I need to undo that.
| | 02:49 | Let's go back up to the top now, Command+click
or Control+click to set it, and let's go across
| | 02:54 | the top one more time.
| | 02:56 | There we go; that looks much better.
| | 02:59 | And so now that I have filled in the big gaps,
I can then start to fill in some of the smaller
| | 03:04 | ones. So let's zoom in, and I am going to pan
around a little bit until I am right here on this coat.
| | 03:10 | And so what I want to do here is I want to
fill in this coat where it's been ripped, and
| | 03:15 | so in order to do that, what I am going to
do is set my sample point, just like this,
| | 03:19 | and then we'll just brush over some of
these areas that have problems. There we go.
| | 03:27 | And so I filled in that area there, set a
sample point just below this, and go across.
| | 03:35 | Don't worry about the fact that I am missing
the button right now. That's not a big deal.
| | 03:38 | Let's go across like that, and
I am doing this just in strokes.
| | 03:43 | There we go, sample here, I am just filling in this
information across, set that sample point there;
| | 03:50 | there we go.
| | 03:51 | Now, remember I said
don't worry about the button?
| | 03:54 | That's because I can come right here, set
a sample point right on the button, and then
| | 03:58 | judging by where I think the button might go, I can come
right here, and just add a button in, just like that.
| | 04:06 | Same holds true on this side. Set
my sample point, go up, brush across,
| | 04:11 | again, I am just setting my sample points,
and brushing across the areas to fill them in.
| | 04:17 | I am Control+clicking, or Command+clicking
on the Mac to fix these areas.
| | 04:21 | I might go just below that,
and go like that. There we go.
| | 04:25 | And again, just filling in
the areas as I go across.
| | 04:28 | I would probably be a little bit more careful
with this if I was doing this for real,
| | 04:32 | but just for demonstration purposes,
this works just fine. There we go.
| | 04:36 | So, fixed up the jacket pretty nicely.
| | 04:38 | If I zoom out a little bit, you can see
just what I was able to do in a few short and
| | 04:42 | easy steps there.
Switch to the Move Tool.
| | 04:44 | I have actually cleaned up the edges all
the way around the photo, and I fixed a lot
| | 04:49 | of the different parts of his jacket.
| | 04:51 | I could also go work on this guy now.
| | 04:53 | But using the Clone Tool to do this is really
quick, and really easy, and enables you to repair
| | 04:59 | flaws in photographs faster than
you probably ever thought possible.
| | 05:03 | You just have to understand how it works, and
how to use it, and also when to use it, and
| | 05:08 | hopefully by now, you know all of those things,
so you can get in and start repairing your
| | 05:12 | photographs using this tool as well.
| | 05:14 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Cloning in perspective| 00:00 | When it comes to cloning, we have to realize
that we don't always work in a true two-dimensional
| | 00:04 | space. As a matter of fact, photographs are
arguably not two-dimensional at all. They
| | 00:09 | always represent some level
of three-dimensional space,
| | 00:12 | and so it would help if we can actually
have a tool that allows us to clone or edit an
| | 00:17 | image in perspective, and that's exactly what
the clone in perspective tool allows you to do.
| | 00:22 | The Perspective Clone Tool is
located right here in the toolbar.
| | 00:25 | You can get to that by clicking on it,
| | 00:26 | and once you do that, you have the ability
to change two things; either that you are
| | 00:30 | modifying perspective, or that
you're going to perspective clone.
| | 00:33 | The first thing you have to do is define the
perspective for the image that you're working on.
| | 00:38 | And so in this case, what I would do is
actually come out and change the perspective.
| | 00:41 | All you have to do is click and drag;
that's the beauty part about this,
| | 00:44 | and what you're doing basically is setting
up the vanishing points for the image that
| | 00:48 | you are working on.
| | 00:49 | And so for this, basically what I'm
doing here is changing the vanishing points.
| | 00:52 | I can zoom out a little bit to change them
even more, so I can expand this out, something
| | 00:58 | kind of like that, and then move
this in, something kind of like this.
| | 01:04 | Again, it just depends on how much you
want the perspective to be incorporated in.
| | 01:09 | And once you set up the perspective, like so,
what you're able to do is then grab the Perspective
| | 01:13 | Clone Tool, and come out into the document.
| | 01:16 | Now, you want to increase the
size of the brush a good bit.
| | 01:18 | You also want to make sure you're working
with a decent brush, not a star brush, like
| | 01:21 | I am working with here. And so I am going to
do a nice soft edge brush, and increase the
| | 01:26 | size a little bit. So the first thing you
want to do is set a sample point, so in this
| | 01:29 | case, I am going to set a sample point right
about here, Command+click or Control+click in
| | 01:33 | order to do that, and when you are ready
to go, just starting brushing with this.
| | 01:39 | And watch what happens
when I make a brush stroke.
| | 01:41 | I'll click, and drag up.
| | 01:42 | Notice how that little crosshair
follows me down this road. Can you see that?
| | 01:48 | It also attempts to clone out in
perspective all the stuff that it's doing.
| | 01:52 | That's where you have to make sure your
sample point is actually really close to being in
| | 01:55 | the same direction as this. See how this kind
of got off-kilter right here in this shadow?
| | 01:59 | So what I would do is undo that, and I
would actually just try to come straight across
| | 02:03 | from that point, and then
brush across like this.
| | 02:09 | And it actually would work
better if I had a bigger point.
| | 02:11 | So let's blow that up a little bit, bigger
point, and let's set the sample point right
| | 02:18 | there, and we'll brush across, like so.
| | 02:21 | There you see it just kind of
goes back with me in perspective.
| | 02:24 | If you make a mistake, that's okay; you can just
go right back, and just kind of brush that out.
| | 02:29 | The thing that it does not
do is it does not do focus.
| | 02:32 | So as this gets out of focus towards the end,
it's not going to fix that, but it does do
| | 02:36 | a nice job of helping remove
objects that I don't want anymore.
| | 02:39 | So I'll just set this right here, and brush
across, so you can see it does a nice job of
| | 02:44 | that, nice job right there, and I am just
brushing across these different areas, and you could
| | 02:50 | go in, and of course, you would spend more
time on this than I am right now, but you could
| | 02:53 | spend as much time as you needed to to fix
all of this, and you can just go right across
| | 02:57 | there, cloning out.
| | 03:01 | And again, I can set that sample point
there, go across, kind of mesh that in.
| | 03:06 | So you can see I have effectively removed
the bottom part of this guy and his dog fairly
| | 03:10 | easily from this photograph just by using
this Perspective Clone Tool, and it's already
| | 03:14 | following those vanishing
lines that I have created there.
| | 03:17 | You can also modify the perspective any time
you want. So I can modify it here to be like
| | 03:21 | it's kind of going down a wall.
| | 03:23 | So I could choose Modify Perspective here,
and I could set this point to be right here,
| | 03:29 | move this point up, zoom out a
little bit, so we can see that.
| | 03:34 | Vanishing point for this is going to be somewhere
down there, and you kind of get the idea of
| | 03:40 | what I'm going for here, just kind of
setting perspectives, so you can do that.
| | 03:44 | That way, whatever you need to do, totally
up to you, but the Perspective Clone Tool
| | 03:48 | does give you a great option for editing in a
three-dimensional way on a two-dimensional object.
| | 03:54 | So it's going to take some time to get used
to this, and I understand that, but the trial
| | 03:58 | and error period -- or the person in seat
time, or PIS time, as I like to call it. You
| | 04:03 | just put your person in your seat,
and you play until you get it right.
| | 04:07 | That is going to be crucial when it comes
to this tool, because not until you play with
| | 04:11 | it do you fully understand its abilities,
its capabilities, and also its limitations.
| | 04:16 | So just take the time to get in here and
play around with some objects that have some
| | 04:20 | perspective in them.
| | 04:22 | The objects that have the more severe perspective
like this, where it has a gigantic vanishing
| | 04:26 | point going back and forth like that; those
are the best ones to start practicing on, because
| | 04:30 | those are going to give you the most real
estate to work with, and so you have some time
| | 04:34 | to practice on depth of field, also on the
perspective itself, how to set up the lines,
| | 04:39 | and all that good stuff.
| | 04:40 | Once you get proficient with these, you
will be able to go into the ones that have more
| | 04:43 | subtle perspective, and make
adjustments in those as well.
| | 04:46 | So whether you're adding something from one
part of the photo to another, or subtracting
| | 04:50 | things, like we were doing here, the Perspective Clone
Tool definitely gives you a great three-dimensional
| | 04:56 | editor for your photographs.
| | 04:58 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Healing tool| 00:00 | Another option for fixing image flaws is going
to be to use something called the Healing Tool,
| | 00:05 | and inside of GIMP, the Healing Tool is
actually a cousin to the Clone Stamp Tool,
| | 00:11 | in that it does pretty much the same thing,
but GIMP says that it is much better for fixing
| | 00:15 | smaller areas of information.
| | 00:18 | Where the Clone Tool can be used to fix things
like these big corners that are missing, the
| | 00:22 | Healing Tool is great for the small bits of
grain, and small rips and tears that you see
| | 00:26 | throughout the image.
| | 00:27 | And so what we want to do
is use the Healing Tool.
| | 00:29 | We can get that by clicking on it, or pressing
the letter H on our keyboard. And we want to
| | 00:33 | work with a fairly small sized brush.
| | 00:35 | You want to shrink the brush size down.
| | 00:36 | You can do that with the left or right bracket keys
on your keyboard to increase or decrease the brush.
| | 00:40 | And I am going to zoom in on my photo, and
I'm also going to pan around to find some
| | 00:46 | of these little areas that need help, so like
this area here, this little rip here, all
| | 00:50 | these little dust speckles; things like that.
| | 00:52 | What we want to do first is set a sample point.
| | 00:54 | So I'm working in the dirt, so I am just
going to click right around here to set a sample
| | 00:58 | point in the dirt, and then we are just
going to click and drag across this, and you see
| | 01:02 | there that it healed that up, and it
doesn't really look like I did anything.
| | 01:06 | Let's move over here. We'll set another sample
point right around in this area, and then just
| | 01:10 | kind of heal it down, just like so.
| | 01:14 | Another area here that needs to be healed
out, just click one time; that goes away.
| | 01:18 | That's the best part about this thing is
you can just set a sample point, and if you
| | 01:21 | are in an area that has similar texture
all around it, you can just click each one of
| | 01:24 | the little spots you want to get rid of. So
for instance, here I am working on basically
| | 01:28 | the same texture all the way through, so let's
just shrink the size of the brush a little bit,
| | 01:31 | and I'll set a sample point here with Command+click
or Control+click, and then I'll come through, and
| | 01:35 | I am just going to remove some of these
little speckles that we see throughout.
| | 01:41 | So I can do that just by
clicking all through here.
| | 01:45 | When I run into the shadow area, I can set a
point for the shadows, and I can fill in these
| | 01:49 | areas that are missing in the shadow, just
like so, and I am just clicking with mouse.
| | 01:53 | Again, you set your control point with Command+click
or Control+click, and then once you have that,
| | 01:58 | set, so I'll set a new point here, Command+click,
Control+click on the PC, and then just come through,
| | 02:03 | and remove all these little dust,
scratches, and things like that.
| | 02:06 | If I get in the shadows, just come right there,
and do that. Same thing goes over here. I'll set
| | 02:13 | a sample point, and I can just come through,
and remove all these little dust scratches.
| | 02:17 | If I see these little creases, I can just paint
across those, and that should get rid of those.
| | 02:24 | So I am doing a fairly decent job of
cleaning this thing up with very little effort.
| | 02:30 | So right here I'll set a sample point, Command+click
or Control+click, and then fix that little gap right there.
| | 02:35 | There we go.
| | 02:38 | And if you make a mistake, like I did there,
that's okay; just set another sample point,
| | 02:42 | brush over it, and fix it up, just like that.
| | 02:46 | So the healing brush is actually, I think, a
little bit more powerful than the clone, because
| | 02:51 | you just get this one click little fix.
| | 02:53 | So same thing, like, for this hat right here.
| | 02:54 | What I would do is shrink the size of the
brush considerably, set my sample point right
| | 02:58 | next to it, then just hover overit, and make
sure I get the whole spot. Boom. Get right
| | 03:02 | in there, and fix it up.
| | 03:04 | It may take a few different clicks
to get it, but you can get it there.
| | 03:07 | And so there you have it. Let's zoom back
out, and I am going to duplicate this image
| | 03:12 | really quick, so I just did
that with Command+D or Control+D.
| | 03:15 | Let's go back over into clone_heal, and File, and
let's do a revert on this one, so File > Revert.
| | 03:22 | I am going to hit Revert to do it.
| | 03:25 | Okay. Let's go back over into this one, and
let's hit the number 1 on our keyboard, and
| | 03:31 | so here is the before: all the dust and scratches.
Let's go down here to the bottom, and take a look at that.
| | 03:37 | Again, so here is before, and after.
| | 03:41 | You see all the spots that are gone, all the little
things we have removed from this, so pretty neat.
| | 03:47 | With just a few clicks, and maybe a few brushstrokes,
I have done some serious retouching work to
| | 03:52 | this old photo just by using this Healing
brush Tool, and you can do this all over the
| | 03:57 | photo. Just make sure you set your sample
point first, and then go in and either brush
| | 04:01 | or click to remove the spots.
| | 04:02 | It's a great way to remove dust and scratches.
| | 04:05 | You can remove dust that might
have gotten on your camera lens.
| | 04:07 | It's not just for old photos. You can
remove blemishes from people's face. Any type of
| | 04:12 | retouching that you need to be done, like
this, can be done very quickly and very easily
| | 04:16 | by using this tool.
| | 04:18 | So remember, you can access this by
pressing letter H on your keyboard,
| | 04:20 | and the next time you need to retouch something
simple in your photograph, try out the Healing
| | 04:26 | Tool to see if it doesn't help you
get there just a little bit faster.
| | 04:28 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
9. Exploring the FiltersUsing the blur filters| 00:00 | Now it's time to start exploring some of
the filters that are available to us inside of
| | 00:04 | GIMP, and we are going to
start in a very exciting place.
| | 00:06 | We are going to start in the
blur section of the filters.
| | 00:08 | This is where you can apply lots of different
blurry effects to your photographs, and then
| | 00:12 | make them interact with the photo
underneath to do some really creative stuff.
| | 00:16 | So I am going to show you the blurs first,
and then we'll go in, and I'll show you exactly
| | 00:19 | how they work, and how you can create some
really interesting looks on your photos.
| | 00:23 | So the first thing I am going to do is
take this image I have, I am going to zoom out
| | 00:26 | on it a little bit by pressing the Minus
key, then I am going to come over to the Layers
| | 00:29 | panel, and I am just going to add a few copies
of this layer in here, and I am going to name
| | 00:33 | these copies accordingly.
| | 00:34 | So the first one here is just going to be
Blur. The second one here, I am going to name
| | 00:39 | it Gaussian Blur. The third one, we are going
to name Motion Blur. And the fourth one, we
| | 00:45 | are going to name Pixelize.
| | 00:47 | And so once I have that done, I am also going
to turn off the visibility for all of them,
| | 00:51 | except for the original, and so the original
is what we are starting with here, so this
| | 00:55 | is your starting off point.
| | 00:56 | Then I want you to go up and turn on just
the Blur layer directly above it, and make
| | 01:00 | sure you are working on that layer as well.
| | 01:02 | The Blur layer is actually really simple.
| | 01:04 | All we have to do is go to Filter > Blur, and select
Blur, and it applies a general blur to the photo.
| | 01:10 | And if I zoom in, you can see here is -- I'll
turn the layer off before, after; just a really
| | 01:15 | subtle blur. Every time you run that
filter, it will blur it a little bit more.
| | 01:19 | I'll turn that layer off. Turn on the Gaussian
Blur layer, and let's zoom back out, and let's
| | 01:24 | see what the Gaussian Blur layer can do.
| | 01:26 | Let's go up to the Filters >
Blur > Gaussian Blur.
| | 01:30 | Gaussian Blur is essentially the same as the
Blur command, except you get a control for it.
| | 01:34 | If it launches in its separate application
window, you can get to that from your Start
| | 01:37 | menu, or from the Mac OS X dock.
| | 01:40 | Once you get the dialog box open, you can
then come in here and adjust the Blur Radius;
| | 01:45 | this is how intense the blur is, essentially.
| | 01:47 | My suggestion would be to look at an area of
great detail to see exactly what it's doing,
| | 01:52 | so right here on the road, I think,
is a great representation of that.
| | 01:54 | I am going to crank this up to somewhere around
15 to really blur it out, and when I hit OK,
| | 02:00 | it should really blur it out.
| | 02:02 | Now, right now you are probably thinking, why
would I want to do that? Just sit tight; we'll
| | 02:05 | get to that in just a minute.
| | 02:07 | Let's turn this off, turn on the Motion
Blur layer, and make sure we are working on the
| | 02:12 | Motion Blur layer. Go to
Filters > Blur > Motion Blur.
| | 02:14 | Again, Motion Blur may launch in its own window.
Just go to that, no big deal, and now we are
| | 02:21 | going to pick one of the three blur types:
you can do Linear, Radial, or Zoom. In this
| | 02:25 | case, I am going to pick Zoom.
| | 02:27 | And then I'll come right down here, and the
center of the blur, If I crank this up quite
| | 02:32 | a bit, you are going to notice,
it's right here.
| | 02:34 | See how it just kind of
radiates out from this one point?
| | 02:37 | What I want is I want the blur
to actually come out from the sun.
| | 02:42 | The sun is located in this top right
hand side, though; it's right there.
| | 02:46 | So what I want is to move
the Blur Radius up that way.
| | 02:48 | So, in order to do that, what I can do is just
shift over the blur by changing the X and Y axes.
| | 02:54 | So I change the X axis, and then change the Y
axis, and I should be able to nail this down
| | 03:00 | pretty simple. I probably need to
move it just a little bit more. There we go.
| | 03:05 | And all you have to do is just move this little
window, and it will automatically update to
| | 03:09 | come and tell you what's going on.
| | 03:12 | So I think that's pretty much got it; good
enough, anyway. So about 785, and maybe 180
| | 03:20 | should do okay,
and then I'll hit OK from here.
| | 03:23 | It may take a moment for this to render,
depending on the size of the photograph.
| | 03:27 | In this case, the photo is pretty big, so
this is going to take just a minute to render.
| | 03:31 | Once the effect is rendered, you will see the
Motion Blur actually kind of radiating out from the sun.
| | 03:35 | That's already a pretty cool effect, but
once we get it really dialed in here in a minute,
| | 03:39 | you will see exactly why I use this.
| | 03:41 | And then let's turn that off, and let's turn on the
Pixelize layer to show you exactly what this does.
| | 03:45 | This one is kind of fun. It's really useful
if you are wanting to protect the identity
| | 03:49 | of someone in a photo.
| | 03:50 | Go to Filters, and go to Blur, and then go
down to Pixelize, and once you get inside of the
| | 03:55 | Pixelize dialog box, which, again, may be its
own little dialog you have to launch, you
| | 03:59 | can get into this, and it basically just blurs
things out like it's pixelized, like a pixelization
| | 04:04 | kind of thing, almost like an 8-bit image.
| | 04:07 | The higher this number, the bigger the
chunks of pixels are going to be. The lower this
| | 04:10 | number, the smaller they are going to be. And
so you can get some really interesting effects
| | 04:14 | just pushing it down to 1, or 2, or 3.
You can also get some really neat effect pushing
| | 04:19 | it up a little bit too.
| | 04:20 | So right about 5 or 6 I think will work
nice for this image. Hit OK, and there it just
| | 04:26 | kind of pixelizes it out; almost makes it
look like something you did in Microsoft Paint
| | 04:29 | back in 1992. Once you get that done,
let's turn that off, and let's go back and check
| | 04:34 | and see what all these can do now.
| | 04:36 | So the Blur layer here, not a lot you can
do with just a general blur, but taking this
| | 04:41 | and reducing the Opacity on it a little bit
might create some decent effects, almost like
| | 04:46 | a haze effect on it. But the Gaussian
Blur I think actually works best for that.
| | 04:50 | So let's select the Gaussian Blur, and then let's
just turn down the Opacity to something like 50%.
| | 04:56 | And when I do that, you are going to see that it
gives it almost like a dreamy type of appearance.
| | 05:00 | So it's zoom in, and I'll pan around, and you
can kind of see, here is before, and here is after.
| | 05:07 | See how it kind of gives
it that dreamy haze feel?
| | 05:10 | That's really nice, and that's just by doing a
simple Gaussian Blur, and reducing the Opacity
| | 05:13 | to something like 50%.
| | 05:16 | Same thing holds true for the Motion Blur,
except for this one, when you change the Motion
| | 05:19 | Blur Opacity, it's just going to create
almost like a ray of light type of effect coming
| | 05:24 | out of that sun that extends
all the way across the picture.
| | 05:28 | And if I come out into the picture itself --
and I accidentally turned down the Opacity,
| | 05:33 | let's turn that back up; something like that --
and let's zoom out on the photo, you can kind
| | 05:37 | of see what I am going for here. These rays
of light kind of extending out all over the
| | 05:41 | picture, giving it a nice effect.
| | 05:44 | And then finally, the Pixelize version. What I
would do with something like this is I would
| | 05:47 | actually put a layer mask on this layer, and
then just pick certain areas that I wanted
| | 05:52 | to; you could do, like,
a nice border around this.
| | 05:54 | So for instance, check this out. If I go and make a nice
selection inside of this, something kind of like this,
| | 06:02 | and once I have my selection made, I am
going to go up to the Layer menu, I am going to
| | 06:05 | go down to Mask, and choose Add Layer Mask.
| | 06:07 | Inside of the Add Layer Mask dialog box,
what I am going to do is make sure that I pick
| | 06:12 | Selection. I am also going to choose to
invert the mask. Basically what I want is for the
| | 06:15 | mask to affect only this area
around the outside, and then I'll hit Add.
| | 06:20 | Once I do that, you are going to see now, if I
go to Select > None, that I have got a pixelized
| | 06:25 | edge around the outside, and the rest of it
is clear, so that just adds sort of a little
| | 06:28 | interesting effect around the outside border,
and if I push that up even more, it would
| | 06:32 | look even more pixelized, with bigger chunks
of pixels; it might look a little bit better.
| | 06:37 | So some pretty neat options available to
me here, just by using these blur filters.
| | 06:42 | So again, here is the Pixelize, we have got
the Motion Blur, which adds the rays of light
| | 06:46 | across our photo, we have got a Gaussian Blur,
which adds a little bit of a dreamy landscape,
| | 06:51 | and then we've got just our general Blur, which
we might use to selectively blur skin to soften
| | 06:56 | that, or get rid of blemishes, or something
like that on our photos. All different types
| | 07:00 | of effects, achievable with these simple blurs,
and then adding a little bit extra to it either
| | 07:05 | through blend modes, opacity,
or even a layer mask.
| | 07:08 | So the possibilities literally are endless,
and in the end, they're totally up to you.
| | 07:12 |
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| Using the distortion filters| 00:00 | Applying special effects or distorting
photos is one of the most fun things to do with a
| | 00:05 | photo in any image editing application, and
in GIMP, there's no shortage of special effects,
| | 00:09 | or distorting filters.
| | 00:11 | And so that's what we are
going to be covering in this movie.
| | 00:13 | If you go up to the Filters menu, and go
down to Distorts, you are going to see a big
| | 00:17 | list of distortion filters, and some of my
favorites are going to be something like the Apply Lens.
| | 00:22 | The Apply Lens allows you to apply almost
like a fisheye effect, and you may have to
| | 00:26 | launch this in its own special window; just go
down to your dock, or your Start menu, pick
| | 00:29 | that up, and then you can say to keep the
original surroundings, or set the surroundings to a
| | 00:34 | background color if you wanted to.
| | 00:35 | In this case, I am going to keep the originals,
and you can also change the Lens refraction
| | 00:39 | amount, so maybe push that up to like 1.7,
hit OK, and it creates this really interesting
| | 00:44 | fisheye, almost bubble-like effect right
there in the middle of the photo. Pretty neat.
| | 00:49 | Let's go back up to the Filters now, and go
back down to Distorts, and inside of the distortion
| | 00:53 | section, you can do something like Mosaic.
| | 00:56 | This is another cool one. I'll bring up
the Mosaic dialog box here, and you can pick
| | 01:00 | the different things that you want, like
Squares, Hexagons, Octagons & Squares, Triangles.
| | 01:07 | I actually like the Triangle one; it looks kind of
like snakeskin. And so you can change the size of this.
| | 01:13 | So let's change the size
down to something like 10.
| | 01:17 | You can also change the height of these;
change the spacing if you wanted to.
| | 01:22 | Taking this down to the
left decreases the spacing.
| | 01:25 | Tile neatness; if you crank this up, it kind
of organizes them a bit. Taking it down sort
| | 01:29 | of disorganizes it, making it look more like
a Mosaic. And then you can change the Light
| | 01:34 | direction on these as well until you get it
right where you want, and then you can also
| | 01:38 | change the Color variation as well.
| | 01:41 | And so once you do that, hit OK.
| | 01:44 | It applies itself to the photo, and
you get some really interesting results.
| | 01:49 | So Edit > Undo will take that back to its original
form, and let's go to the Filters menu, and
| | 01:54 | go back down to Distorts.
| | 01:57 | Another great one is going to be the Pagecurl
effect. And the Pagecurl Effect, just launch
| | 02:01 | that in its own window, like so.
| | 02:02 | You can pick which way the Pagecurl goes,
so I am going to do the lower right corner.
| | 02:05 | If you want to shade under the curl, you can.
You can also pick what color you use in this.
| | 02:11 | I am just going to do the Foreground/background
colors, and you can set Opacity as well, so
| | 02:15 | let's check that down to something like
75, just to show you an example, and hit OK.
| | 02:20 | Once I do that, it applies itself. There
you go. There is the Pagecurl right there.
| | 02:24 | You don't get any real big control on how
big it curls, or anything like that, but you
| | 02:27 | do get to control the direction and the overall
color scheme and things like that, so pretty
| | 02:32 | interesting little effect in and of itself.
| | 02:34 | Command+Z or Control+Z to undo that.
| | 02:36 | Let's go back up to the Filters one more
time, and let's go back into Distorts, and let's
| | 02:40 | take a look at one other one that we have inside
of here, and that's going to be the Wind feature.
| | 02:46 | So the Wind filter allows us to do exactly that;
| | 02:49 | it looks like Wind is being applied to this.
| | 02:51 | So Blast is actually a pretty good one.
| | 02:54 | You can set the Direction of this,
and set the edge that's effected.
| | 02:59 | You can change the Threshold amount, and
also the Strength; that's the intensity of it.
| | 03:03 | And so basically what I like to do here --
let's cancel out. I like to create a duplicate of
| | 03:06 | my Background layer, then run this filter
by going to Distorts, go down to Wind, and
| | 03:12 | we'll launch that up in its own window.
I crank up the Threshold, and crank up the
| | 03:17 | Strength, and hit OK.
| | 03:19 | That's going to make it look kind of blurry a
little bit, but then just change the Opacity
| | 03:24 | of your layer to something like 50%.
| | 03:28 | You get this kind of dreamy look to it, with
these little light trails all around different
| | 03:33 | areas of the photo that you can then
go in and mask different areas out.
| | 03:36 | You can make certain objects look like they are
in motion, while certain objects stay stationary.
| | 03:40 | It's a really cool effect that you can do there.
| | 03:43 | And again, when you are finished, just toss
that layer away if you don't need it anymore,
| | 03:46 | and you get right back to your original photo.
| | 03:47 | So again, we are practicing
nondestructive editing, which is very important.
| | 03:51 | So, no matter what your needs are, the Distort
filters certainly have a lot of different ways
| | 03:56 | that you can change the look and feel of
your photo, or your project inside of GIMP.
| | 04:01 | So my suggestion would be just to go in and
take a look at each and every one of these,
| | 04:04 | and see what they have to offer you, and then
see what kind of creative things you can come
| | 04:09 | up with by adjusting these settings,
and applying them to your own work.
| | 04:12 |
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| Creating a drop shadow| 00:00 | One of the things that everybody wants to
know how to do inside of GIMP is create a
| | 00:04 | drop shadow effect. That adds depth, and adds
a really cool bit of perspective to any photo
| | 00:09 | or any project that you might be working on.
| | 00:11 | And so in this movie, I am going to walk
you through how to create a drop shadow.
| | 00:14 | It's actually using one of the
filters called Light and Shadows.
| | 00:17 | And so what we are going to do basically
is we are going to take this photograph that
| | 00:20 | we have here, and we are going to turn it into
sort of like a Polaroid image that's floating
| | 00:23 | inside of this document.
| | 00:25 | And so I have got this image here, and what I
am going to do is just simply resize it a
| | 00:28 | little bit. And so in order to do that, what
I am going to do is grab the Scale Tool, and
| | 00:34 | I'll just go ahead and
sort of shrink it down.
| | 00:38 | And you will notice as I am shrinking it down
that these are not linked together right here;
| | 00:42 | just link those together.
| | 00:43 | That way everything changes in conjunction
with one another, and I'll hit Scale.
| | 00:47 | There we go. Then I'll grab my Move Tool.
| | 00:50 | It doesn't matter how big or
how small this is right now.
| | 00:53 | And once I do that, everything should be good.
| | 00:55 | I am going to create a new layer, drag it
beneath, and I want to fill this with a color.
| | 01:01 | So I am going to grab my paint bucket tool.
| | 01:04 | And since I have white as my background color,
I am going to choose BG color fill, and then
| | 01:10 | just click anywhere right there. That
should fill that with white. There we go.
| | 01:14 | And so now I am going to take my sunflower
right here, go up to the Filters menu, go
| | 01:19 | to Light and Shadow, and choose Drop Shadow.
| | 01:21 | Drop Shadow will have to launch in its own
little window here. And so what I'm going
| | 01:26 | to do -- you don't get a
preview here, unfortunately.
| | 01:27 | So I am going to crank the
Opacity down a little bit.
| | 01:32 | I'll change the X offset, something like 2 pixels; Y
offset, something like 2 pixels, and then we'll hit OK.
| | 01:39 | That's going to add a drop shadow to it, and the
drop shadow actually comes in as its own layer.
| | 01:43 | You can see that now, and I can move this around.
| | 01:45 | If I grab the Move Tool, I can nudge it with my
arrow keys to get it exactly where I want it to go.
| | 01:53 | So it comes in as its own layer.
| | 01:54 | The good news is, you can link these two
layers together inside of the Layers panel.
| | 01:58 | You can also create a new group on top of
them, and then drop them into the group, and
| | 02:04 | then just make sure that they have
the stacking order correct right there.
| | 02:07 | So there you can do that, and you can call
this layer group Polaroid group, or whatever
| | 02:13 | you want to call it.
| | 02:14 | And so now these will move in conjunction
with one another; the shadow moves with the
| | 02:18 | photo at all times, which is pretty nice.
| | 02:21 | And so that is how you create
a drop shadow inside of GIMP.
| | 02:24 | It's a little bit of a work around, unlike,
you know, other programs that just allow you
| | 02:27 | apply a drop shadow
dynamically to anything that you have.
| | 02:30 | But I actually like this; because
the drop shadow is its own layer,
| | 02:32 | I can now take this, and I could distort it,
and transform it, and make the shadow look
| | 02:36 | even cooler than it is right now.
| | 02:39 | So whenever you need to add a little bit
of depth to your design, just remember, go
| | 02:43 | underneath the Filter menu, go to
Light and Shadow, and then pick Drop Shadow.
| | 02:46 | It will have to launch in its own little window,
especially if you are on the Mac, so you might
| | 02:50 | have to check your dock for that, but once
it opens up, you can then apply the shadow
| | 02:54 | and then it turns into its own layer.
| | 02:56 | Once it's on its own layer, you then have
full creative control over it to distort it,
| | 02:59 | transform it, do whatever you want to it, and
you can create some really, really awesome stuff.
| | 03:04 |
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| Adding noise to an image| 00:00 | Although in most cases we are trying to
remove noise from photographs, there does come a
| | 00:04 | time when photographers or somebody else
wants to add in noise to a photo, whether they're
| | 00:09 | trying to age the photo, make it look more
like it was shot with film, or whatever the
| | 00:12 | case may be, adding noise can actually add
a little bit of an extra creative touch to
| | 00:16 | a photograph, as long as it's done properly.
| | 00:19 | And so what we do here is add a little
bit of noise to this photo that we have.
| | 00:23 | And in order to do that, we are going to
go up to the Filters menu, and go down to the
| | 00:27 | Noise, and inside of the Noise selections
here we have quite a few to choose from.
| | 00:30 | I am going to pick the Noise generator, though,
because I feel like this gives me the most options.
| | 00:34 | Then I am going to launch this
in its little own little window.
| | 00:37 | And you will notice when you get in here that
there is a not a lot of noise being introduced,
| | 00:40 | and my suggestion would be to pan somewhere in
your photo that has a lot of good representations
| | 00:44 | of both shadows and highlights,
so you see exactly what's going on.
| | 00:48 | We want to make sure that we are introducing
only luminance noise, because only luminance
| | 00:51 | noise is what we want in this case, because that's
going to create the most realistic type of noise.
| | 00:57 | Now, in terms of the Photons for the first
option, it tells you that this determines
| | 01:00 | the number of photons required to increase
the pixel value by one; the higher the value,
| | 01:04 | the less noisy the result, and
the long the processing time.
| | 01:08 | So in this case, I am going to crank this
up just a little bit; something like four.
| | 01:12 | When I do that, you are going to see a
little bit of noise gets introduced. Not much.
| | 01:16 | Clicking on the next one here, and the great
part about this dialog box is when you hover
| | 01:20 | over these, it gives you a good
explanation of what's going on.
| | 01:22 | So when you hover over the Gauss setting, it
says Gaussian noise is standard distributed
| | 01:26 | noise which is independent from pixel value.
| | 01:29 | Gaussian noise normally arises due to the
thermal fluctuations in sensors, amplifiers, etcetera.
| | 01:34 | So you can introduce a little bit of
that noise in there if you wanted to.
| | 01:38 | Uniform noise; again, this is the width of
the box distribution. The larger the value,
| | 01:42 | the more noise is apparent.
| | 01:43 | In this case, let's crank that up just a tad.
And then we've also got this part right here,
| | 01:48 | the Laplace, which determines the Scale parameter
of the Laplace distribution. The higher the
| | 01:53 | value, the more noise,
| | 01:54 | so in other words, if you want
more noise, crank up the slider.
| | 01:57 | And then finally Lorentz. Same thing applies
here; determines the Scale parameter of the
| | 02:01 | Lorentz distribution, which is the half width,
half maximum of the distribution; maybe crank
| | 02:06 | that up a little bit.
| | 02:07 | The higher this goes, the
uglier it gets, in my opinion,
| | 02:10 | so I tend to leave this one at about zero.
And so now I have got a pretty good amount
| | 02:13 | of noise right here.
| | 02:14 | If I hit OK, it's going to apply this noise
to my photo, and once that renders, you are
| | 02:19 | going to see that noise being introduced, especially
up here in the top, right in the sky; that's
| | 02:25 | where it's most obvious.
| | 02:26 | Now, what I might do in this case is undo this
noise, and I can do that just by stepping back.
| | 02:33 | And if I go back to my Undo History, I can
step back to my base layer right there, and
| | 02:38 | then go back into my layers.
| | 02:39 | What I might do here is actually create a
duplicate layer, and then run the Noise filter
| | 02:44 | by going to Filter > Repeat "Noise Generator".
| | 02:47 | That creates a copy of that
noisy layer on top of my original.
| | 02:50 | You can see here is before, and after.
| | 02:52 | And so what I would then do is apply a layer
mask to this, and then mask out the areas that
| | 02:57 | might be a little too noisy.
| | 02:58 | So in this case, let's go to Layer, let's
choose Mask, and let's do Add Layer Mask, and
| | 03:03 | let's just do White, (full Opacity), hit OK,
and then I'll grab my brush tool, increase
| | 03:09 | the size of my brush, using the Right
Bracket key, considerably, and once I get that
| | 03:14 | to be a pretty decent sized brush -- maybe
around a hundred pixels -- get that done. I'll also
| | 03:19 | decrease the Opacity of the
brush; something around like 50.
| | 03:24 | That way, this is just going to
reduce the Opacity of this to about 50%.
| | 03:27 | Watch this; I can actually just kind
of brush out some of this extra noise.
| | 03:31 | It's still going to be grainy, because I'm
only using 50% Opacity, but it's not going
| | 03:35 | to be as grainy as it was before.
| | 03:38 | So it's kind of a controlled
distribution of the noise. There we go.
| | 03:42 | So, still grainy. If there is any areas that
really bother me, I can go in and fully black
| | 03:46 | those out. And if I show you the layer mask
by going to Layer > Mask, and Show Layer Mask,
| | 03:51 | you can see where I have painted just with
almost 50% gray, and I can go in and I can
| | 03:55 | actually fix some of these areas
that are missing in here. There you go.
| | 04:02 | And Layer > Mask > Show Layer
Mask turns it right back off.
| | 04:05 | So now I have got the good noise applied in
here, kind of a weaker noise up here at the
| | 04:08 | top, making for a really nice photo that
looks like maybe it was shot on film, or maybe it's
| | 04:13 | just aged a little bit.
| | 04:14 | I could run a sepia filter on this, and change
it to a sepia tone, and it would look even better.
| | 04:19 | So that's how you introduce noise back into
a photo, and then also how you can lessen the
| | 04:24 | effects of it in certain areas by using a
layer mask to control exactly where the noise
| | 04:29 | affects, and where it does not.
| | 04:30 |
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| Exploring the artistic filters| 00:00 | Before we wrap up this chapter, there's one
last set of filters that I want to go through,
| | 00:04 | because these are the ones that are most fun,
because they add a little bit of an artistic
| | 00:08 | touch to the photos that you
work on here inside of GIMP.
| | 00:11 | So it's located in the Filters menu, it's
down close to the bottom, it's called Artistic,
| | 00:15 | and you have a lot of different options here.
| | 00:17 | So, I am going to create several duplicates of my
photo, so you can see all of these different examples.
| | 00:22 | So I am just going to come over here, and
click the duplicate button a few times, and I am
| | 00:25 | just going to start
running the filters on these.
| | 00:27 | So I am going to select the first duplicate here,
and then I'll turn off the remaining ones there.
| | 00:32 | Then we'll go the Filters menu, and we'll go
down to Artistic, and inside of the Artistic
| | 00:37 | set of filters, I want to go to the first
one here, which is Cartoon, and I'll launch
| | 00:41 | it up in its own window.
| | 00:43 | And once I have Cartoon open, I can adjust
the Mask radius, and Percent black; how much
| | 00:48 | black I am reintroducing into this.
| | 00:51 | And the higher this goes, the more
cartoony or hand-drawn it's supposed to look.
| | 00:54 | If I hit OK, you can see it adds sort of
that almost like it's got an ink quality to it.
| | 01:00 | So that's a pretty neat
little effect. All right.
| | 01:02 | Let's turn that off, and let's go to the next
one. Filters > Artistic; another good one here
| | 01:09 | is going to be the GIMPPressionist.
| | 01:14 | And so inside of the GIMPPressionist section,
you can apply a lot of different things in here.
| | 01:18 | You can apply stuff like ApplyCanvas, Ballpark,
Canvas, Crosshatch, Cubism, Dotify; let's do Cubism.
| | 01:24 | We can also select the
paper on which it's put on.
| | 01:27 | So let's do something like defaultpaper. Brush,
you can select the Brush, Orientation, Size,
| | 01:32 | Placement, Color, General;
I am just going to hit OK.
| | 01:37 | Once I do that, you are going to see it turns it
into sort of like a painting look, which is really neat.
| | 01:43 | Starting on the next one, go to
the Filters menu > Artistic, and Oilify.
| | 01:50 | Oilify turns this into an oil
painting, just like it sounds.
| | 01:54 | So the Mask size, if you crank this up, you
can see what this does when it cranks it up;
| | 01:58 | makes everything kind of blur together. The lower
the Mask size, the more detail you preserve in here.
| | 02:02 | You can also set a size map
based on the layers that you create.
| | 02:06 | In this case, I am just going to
adjust the mask-size by itself, then hit OK.
| | 02:09 | Once I do that, it may take awhile to render,
but once it renders, you are going to see
| | 02:13 | that it turns this into an oil painting like effect,
something kind of like that; pretty interesting.
| | 02:18 | You can take that, and then blend it with
the original to make it look like it was sort
| | 02:21 | of being painted or
something like that. Pretty neat.
| | 02:24 | Turn that off. Turn the last one back on.
| | 02:26 | Let's go back up to Filters, and let's go into
Artistic, and one of the last ones we have here is Van Gogh.
| | 02:34 | And so if I go into Van Gogh, you can pick
what channels are affected. In this case, I
| | 02:38 | am going to affect the Hue. The Effect Operator,
stick with Gradient, do this with the source
| | 02:45 | image; you can change
all these different things.
| | 02:47 | Unfortunately, there's no preview in here, so it's
just kind of like pick and choose.
| | 02:51 | Hit OK to see what it does, and then once it
runs, you will see the effect, and then you
| | 02:55 | can kind of adjust accordingly. There we go.
| | 02:58 | And so once that finishes rendering, you can
see all of the different touches that it does.
| | 03:01 | It makes it look almost like a Van
Gogh like painting, in other words.
| | 03:05 | And so you can undo that any time you want. Go
back in there, and you can go down to Artistic,
| | 03:10 | and choose different settings for this.
| | 03:12 | So Van Gogh settings, I can go back in, and
let's change this to more, Filter length,
| | 03:17 | a little bit higher, Minimum value, crank that
down, Maximum value, crank that up, and hit OK.
| | 03:23 | Again, this is going to
take some time to render.
| | 03:25 | Once it renders, though,
you'll see the results.
| | 03:27 | Again, no preview window, which is unfortunate,
which means you are just going to have to
| | 03:30 | kind of wait and see what your settings actually
did to your photo, but once it finishes rendering,
| | 03:35 | you will get a pretty good idea.
| | 03:37 | There we go, and so once that finishes rendering
there, I get a pretty good idea of exactly what I did.
| | 03:41 | It almost gives us sort of a
dreamy look. Pretty nice; not too bad.
| | 03:45 | And so that's the Van Gogh.
| | 03:47 | Underneath that's going to be Oilify. Underneath
that, if you remember, we went back up to Artistic
| | 03:50 | and we did the GIMPressionist, which
is like an impressionist type painting.
| | 03:55 | We also had our Cartoon, and then of
course, our original photo as well.
| | 04:00 | So as you can see the artistic filters give
you the ability to change the overall appearance
| | 04:05 | of your image in many different ways.
| | 04:08 | It's totally up to you what
they look like in the end.
| | 04:11 | Just open them up, play around, and you
will be amazed at what you can come up with.
| | 04:14 |
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|
|
10. Automating TasksUsing the batch processor| 00:00 | Up until now, we have been doing things on
a image by image basis here inside of GIMP,
| | 00:05 | but I realize that most of the time we are
going to be working with more than one image
| | 00:09 | at a given time, and we may want to do the
same action to multiple images at the same
| | 00:15 | time inside of GIMP.
| | 00:16 | So in this movie, we are going to be exploring
one of the automation features inside of GIMP
| | 00:20 | known as batch image processing.
| | 00:23 | And so in order to do that, what you want to
do is go up to the File menu, and choose Batch
| | 00:28 | Image Manipulation.
| | 00:28 | And if you are not familiar with what this
does, this actually launches an external window,
| | 00:34 | and inside of this window, you're able to not
only specify steps that you want to perform
| | 00:38 | on images, but also specify entire folders of
images as well that you want to run these actions on.
| | 00:44 | Once you have set up the actions, and the files,
then you can select an output folder, and then
| | 00:50 | you can put all of the resulting images in
that folder, and then preview them after the fact.
| | 00:54 | So let's are go ahead and do this now.
| | 00:56 | Let's add an action to this.
| | 00:57 | so let's say that I
wanted watermark some photos.
| | 01:00 | So I am going to choose Apply a watermark
text or image, and so for the text watermark,
| | 01:05 | I am just going to say
(c) 2012 My Photo Studio.
| | 01:13 | And once I type that out, I can
also select the font for that.
| | 01:16 | So let's select Helvetica; that's fine.
| | 01:18 | I am going to blow this up quite a bit, so
we can see it though, about 26 pixels; there we go.
| | 01:22 | And the color for this; let's do
this in a white color if we could.
| | 01:29 | So once I get that set to white,
I'll hit OK.
| | 01:33 | And then we can go down here to the
bottom, and select the position of that.
| | 01:36 | In this case, it's putting it in the bottom-right corner,
I think that's okay, and I'll hit OK to that as well.
| | 01:41 | Now, I am also going to be putting
these images on the Web, let's say,
| | 01:44 | so let's hit Add to add another action to
this, and let's say, okay, we are going to resize
| | 01:48 | them, and I am going to say I want to set exactly the
size in pixels, so I want to set just the width only.
| | 01:54 | They need to be within an 800 pixel range.
| | 01:56 | It doesn't matter how tall they are as
long as they are 800 pixels wide or smaller.
| | 01:59 | So 800 pixels wide, and I am going to
leave my Interpolation quality to Cubic.
| | 02:04 | That's the best choice you have there.
| | 02:05 | I don't want to change the
resolution, so I'll hit OK.
| | 02:08 | And so now I have got two steps: I have got the
watermarking stepm and I have got the resizing step.
| | 02:12 | Now I am ready to add some images to this.
| | 02:14 | So let's go ahead and add some image files.
| | 02:16 | I am going to go into my Desktop, and in my
Exercise Files folder, and Chapter 10; there
| | 02:21 | is a folder called Batch. All right.
| | 02:23 | So inside of that Batch folder, you will see
a list of all of the available files, and it's
| | 02:27 | one through ten; flowers one through ten.
| | 02:29 | If for some reason when you're navigating
to this, you do not see the images in here,
| | 02:33 | because this is something I've experienced,
especially on the Mac platform,
| | 02:37 | what you need to do is just launch a Finder
window, go out to your Desktop, go into the
| | 02:42 | Exercise Files, go down to Chapter 10 > Batch,
and then take all of those files, and drag
| | 02:47 | them over into the window,
and then they will show up.
| | 02:50 | It's a very interesting problem.
| | 02:50 | I am not sure why it happens, but
this has happened to me several times,
| | 02:54 | so if you get in here, and you can't see them,
just do exactly what I just talked about right
| | 02:58 | there, and they should appear for you.
| | 03:00 | And then go ahead and hit Add.
| | 03:02 | Once you do that, it should show up here as
the input files are located in all of this here.
| | 03:09 | If they do not show up, you can go back and add
image files again, and select them all, add them in.
| | 03:13 | There we go.
| | 03:15 | That way they should all be located in there.
| | 03:18 | Now you want to select an output folder.
| | 03:19 | I am going to go to my Desktop, and
choose a folder called Batch Results.
| | 03:24 | You can stick these anywhere you want.
| | 03:25 | I am just going to stick them in a folder
called Batch Results that I have created.
| | 03:29 | And so once I do that,
I'm going to hit Apply.
| | 03:32 | This is now going to go through and run those
two actions on all of the photos. You can
| | 03:35 | see it going through
flower1, flower2, etcetera.
| | 03:39 | And once this finishes, I should have a new
set of images inside of that Batch Results
| | 03:44 | folder on my Desktop.
| | 03:46 | Again, you could have put these anywhere on your
hard drive. It doesn't really matter where they go.
| | 03:49 | So there is flower number 8, 9, 10, all done,
and I'll go open up a new Finder window. Here
| | 03:54 | is Batch Results,
and there are my new images.
| | 03:56 | If I look at one, there is my image, resized
to 800 pixels wide, and My Photo Studio in
| | 04:03 | the bottom right-hand corner.
| | 04:04 | So it does a really nice job of resizing and
adding the watermark to each one of the photos
| | 04:12 | that you see here. And all I am doing on the
Mac is just going and pressing the Spacebar
| | 04:15 | key to temporarily bring these up.
| | 04:17 | You could also open these up in any application
you wanted to check and make sure that it
| | 04:22 | did everything that you wanted it to do, but
otherwise, this is a great way for processing
| | 04:28 | multiple photos at one time.
| | 04:29 | And you can see here you have all different
types of actions that you can perform: resizing,
| | 04:33 | crops, flip, rotate, color correction, sharpening,
blurring, applying watermarks, changing the
| | 04:39 | format and quality, so you can go from, say,
GIMP to JPEG, or JPEG to GIF, or something like that.
| | 04:45 | Rename it with a pattern, or you
can do an Other GIMP procedure.
| | 04:49 | Clicking on Other GIMP procedure, you go in, and
you choose a procedure. and define its parameters.
| | 04:53 | It's a little bit more complicated.
| | 04:55 | But for now, just know that processing multiple
images at a time can be done inside of GIMP.
| | 05:00 | It's actually a really well done interface.
| | 05:02 | I'm very happy with the results. I am very
pleased with the speed at which it does it as well.
| | 05:06 | When you're finished with this, just click
Close, and you can continue working, or you
| | 05:10 | can go back in and load up a whole another
set to do another batch process if you need to.
| | 05:14 |
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| Exploring essential keyboard shortcuts| 00:00 | One of the keys to becoming more productive
in any application is learning the keyboard
| | 00:04 | shortcuts that are associated with that application, and
GIMP has a ton of keyboard shortcuts associated with it.
| | 00:10 | We're lucky, though, because GIMP also does a
great job of displaying these keyboard shortcuts
| | 00:14 | in ways that are really easy to find.
| | 00:16 | I am going to start just by creating a blank
document here, so I'll just go to File > New.
| | 00:20 | It doesn't matter what size I pick. I just
want something open to show you an example of.
| | 00:24 | And so the first thing I'm going to
talk to you about is tool shortcuts.
| | 00:27 | If you look over here in the Tools panel,
when you hover over a tool, every tool has
| | 00:30 | a keyboard key
associated with it inside of GIMP.
| | 00:33 | So for instance, the Rectangle Select Tool,
if I press the letter R, that selects that.
| | 00:38 | If I go to the letter E, that's for Ellipse.
If go to the letter F, that is for Free Select.
| | 00:44 | U is for Fuzzy Select. Then we have Shift+O
for Select by Color. I for Scissors, and M for
| | 00:54 | Move; that makes sense.
| | 00:57 | A lot of these do make sense. Some of them don't
make a lot of sense, but you can kind of get the idea.
| | 01:02 | Some of the more common ones that you'll use:
Paths, that's the letter B; it'll be Shift+C
| | 01:07 | for the Crop Tool, it'll be the letter T
for the Text Tool, and just all different types
| | 01:13 | of keyboard keys are associated
with all of these different tools.
| | 01:16 | So take the time to
hover over each one of these.
| | 01:19 | The ones that you use most often, I would even
recommend making yourself a little chart, and
| | 01:23 | then either sticking it next to your monitor,
or sticking it next to your keyboard. That way
| | 01:26 | you can kind of get to know some of these.
| | 01:28 | As I've been learning and getting to know
GIMP myself, so that I could prepare for this
| | 01:32 | course, I actually created my own little reference
chart that I used and I got pretty proficient
| | 01:36 | at switching between the tools, so I know
that if I need to instantly switch to the
| | 01:40 | Crop Tool, I can do that with Shift+C, and then
right after that, if I needed to use something
| | 01:45 | like the Paths Tool, I'll switch to B, or if
need to move something, switch to letter M.
| | 01:50 | And that just makes it so much easier for
me to switch between tools, because I don't
| | 01:54 | have to keep coming over here, finding the
tool I want, selecting it, and then coming
| | 01:57 | back over into my window.
| | 01:59 | If you can just keep one hand on the keyboard,
and one hand on the mouse, and instantly switch
| | 02:03 | between tools, it makes it so much easier.
| | 02:05 | Now, another set of keyboard keys that are
going to be really helpful to you when using
| | 02:09 | the Brush Tool, you probably heard me talk
about this throughout the course, but you
| | 02:12 | might not have known
exactly what I was talking about.
| | 02:14 | Basically what I'm talking about is when
you have a brush like this, if I come out and
| | 02:17 | make a brushstroke, you can
see the width of the brush.
| | 02:20 | If I want to increase that, I just hold down
the Right Bracket key on my keyboard, and
| | 02:24 | that allows me to make a bigger brushstroke.
| | 02:26 | If I want it to be smaller, I hold down
the Left Bracket key on my keyboard, and that
| | 02:30 | allows me to make a smaller brushstroke.
| | 02:32 | I can shrink that down as small as I want to the
point where it's just a little pencil thin line.
| | 02:36 | I could also blow that up to the point where
it's really, really big. And again, I'm just
| | 02:41 | holding down the Right Bracket key
or Left Bracket key on my keyboard in order
| | 02:46 | to do that, and I can switch brush size really easily
by doing that. It makes it really, really easy to do.
| | 02:54 | So the next time you're working on a layer
mask, or if you're painting, or retouching, or
| | 02:58 | whatever you might be wanting to do with the
brush tool, just remember, the Left and Right
| | 03:01 | Bracket keys make it so much easier to change
the brush size on the fly than actually coming
| | 03:06 | over, finding the brush size in here, clicking,
and dragging this little slider around. It's
| | 03:12 | so much easier just to use your bracket keys.
| | 03:14 | Now, you'll also notice in the menu structure
of GIMP that there are keyboard shortcuts
| | 03:17 | out to the right-hand side of the commands
that they consider that you use the most often.
| | 03:21 | So ones like New Layer, Shift+Command+N creates
new layer. Duplicating a layer is Shift+Command+D.
| | 03:27 | You've also got things in the Tools menu, like
switching the Paths, Color Picker, Zoom, Measure,
| | 03:33 | Text, etcetera. Those are
all listed for you there.
| | 03:36 | The Filter menu has a couple
of great keyboard shortcuts.
| | 03:39 | If you want to repeat the last filter you just used,
just hit Command+F or Control+F on your keyboard.
| | 03:45 | So let's say, for instance, that I ran a
filter on these brushstrokes here. Let's just go
| | 03:48 | in and do a filter real quick.
| | 03:50 | Let's do something artistic, and let's do something
like Oilify, and I'll open that up, and so this
| | 03:58 | basically just makes this look kind of
like an oil painting. So we'll crank that up a
| | 04:05 | little bit, get that going,
and hit OK.
| | 04:07 | So once I do that, it's
going to apply the filter.
| | 04:09 | If I look at it, and I think, you know what?
I could use one more round of filtering, I'll
| | 04:13 | just hit Command+F or Control+F on my keyboard,
and look; it just runs that same filter again.
| | 04:17 | You're going to see it just compound the effects
of the filter each and every time. So Command+F
| | 04:21 | or Control+F will do that.
| | 04:23 | Of course, the basic ones that you need to
know in order to undo and redo would be Command+Z
| | 04:27 | on the Mac, Control+Z on the PC, and Command+Y
on the Mac, Control+Y on the PC will redo.
| | 04:33 | You can also see those
underneath the Edit menu.
| | 04:36 | Also some of the ones that you might find
useful: Copy, and Paste; Command+C, Control+C,
| | 04:43 | Command+V, Control+V. And my favorite ones here,
Fill with Foreground, Fill with Background,
| | 04:47 | and Fill with Pattern. That's Command+Comma
for fill with foreground, Command+Period
| | 04:53 | to fill with the background color, and
to fill with a pattern, it's Command+Semicolon.
| | 04:56 | So let's try those out.
| | 04:59 | So Command+Comma fills with the foreground
color. Right now that's set to black.
| | 05:02 | If I want to fill this with white, I just do
Command+Period. If I want to fill with a pattern,
| | 05:07 | Command+Semicolon. That's going to fill
with the last pattern that I chose.
| | 05:11 | That's fairly quick to do all of that.
| | 05:13 | So if I think, nah, that doesn't really look good,
I'll just fill it with black; Command+Comma. Or
| | 05:17 | no, I think I want to go white; Command+Period.
| | 05:21 | So there are all different types of keyboard
shortcuts, and some of them you're going to
| | 05:24 | find useful, some of them
you won't find useful.
| | 05:27 | I know that your workflow is going to be
completely different from mine, and that's okay.
| | 05:30 | The great news is, though, you can take the
ones that you use most often, commit those
| | 05:34 | to memory, make yourself a chart,
| | 05:36 | whatever it might be that makes it easier
for you to get around inside of GIMP, that's
| | 05:40 | what these keyboard shortcuts are for.
| | 05:42 | So take the time, learn the ones that are
going to help improve your workflow, make
| | 05:46 | yourself a cheat sheet,
and commit those to memory.
| | 05:49 | You'll be really glad you did, because in the
end, productivity always equates to dollar signs.
| | 05:54 |
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11. Printing and Saving ImagesSaving your work in GIMP| 00:00 | Now we have come to a really important
part of the course: saving your work.
| | 00:04 | That's right; we have been doing all of this
work so far, and really haven't saved anything.
| | 00:08 | So in order to save your work inside of GIMP,
if you've already got a file open that has
| | 00:11 | been saved before, you can just press the
Command+S or Control+S keyboard shortcut on your
| | 00:16 | keyboard, or go up to the File
menu, and choose Save to do that.
| | 00:20 | If you've never saved a file before, you've been
working this whole time, and it's a brand new
| | 00:24 | file, you can just go up to the File menu,
and choose Save As, and that will navigate
| | 00:27 | you to the Save As dialog box.
| | 00:29 | You can then pick a spot, like your Desktop,
to save it in, and then you just come up here
| | 00:34 | to the top, and select a name.
| | 00:36 | So for this, I'll just call this floppy_disc.
| | 00:40 | Once I get that typed out, I
then have the ability to save it.
| | 00:44 | This is going to save it in the default format
for GIMP, and that's the .xcf format, which
| | 00:50 | allows you to then open this up in
other versions of GIMP on other computers.
| | 00:54 | If you wanted to save this out as a JPEG,
or any other type of file, you have to use a
| | 00:59 | different command known as the Export command,
and that's something that we're going to be
| | 01:02 | talking about in its own
movie a little bit later on.
| | 01:05 | But for now, just know that any time you need
to save a file from GIMP, it's either Command+S
| | 01:09 | or Control+S on your keyboard, or File > Save As,
or if you want to do the keyboard shortcut
| | 01:14 | for that, it'll be Shift+Command+S
on the Mac, or Shift+Control+S on the PC.
| | 01:19 | You can also save a copy of this file. So
if you wanted to save a copy of it out, you
| | 01:23 | can save a copy just like this; still a .xcf
file, and it just saves a copy of this image
| | 01:29 | in the current state that you're in, and then
you can continue working, and save the original
| | 01:33 | file on top of that if you wanted.
| | 01:35 | So that's the basics of saving documents
here inside of GIMP. Make sure to save, and
| | 01:39 | save often, and remember, if the file doesn't
exist in three places, it really doesn't exist,
| | 01:45 | so be sure to back up your work as well.
| | 01:47 |
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| Exporting for print and web| 00:00 | When it comes to saving files for both print
and Web, you're going to use the export feature
| | 00:04 | inside of GIMP, and the export feature allows
you to export images out of GIMP in a variety
| | 00:09 | of different formats, ranging from GIF, all the
way to JPEG, even a Photoshop file, and a TIFF.
| | 00:15 | So it really depends on the destination of
the file, and of course, the settings at which
| | 00:20 | the person you're sending
it to requires it to be.
| | 00:23 | So if you're sending this out to a commercial
printer, check with them first to see exactly
| | 00:26 | what type of file, what size file, and all
that good stuff they want, then you can go
| | 00:30 | into the Export command, and you can select
the right file type, and determine if that's
| | 00:34 | going to generate the right type of file.
| | 00:36 | You can also, if you're going out to the Web,
ask your Web designer or Web developer exactly
| | 00:41 | what size the image needs to be. You can do
all that for them here in GIMP using the scale
| | 00:46 | command, the crop command, and all that kind
of stuff, and then you can export it out in
| | 00:50 | a variety of different formats, whether it
be a GIF, a PNG, or a JPEG; it just depends
| | 00:55 | on what type of artwork you've
created, and what type of file they require.
| | 00:59 | But in order to export a file out of GIMP,
just go to the File menu, and choose Export,
| | 01:04 | and once you get into the Export menu -- I'll
just save this to my Desktop -- you can go down
| | 01:08 | here to the bottom where it says Select
File Type (By Extension). Open that up, and it's
| | 01:12 | going to show you a whole list of the different
file types that you have available to you
| | 01:15 | inside of GIMP. And so you have
things in here, like a GIF to send out;
| | 01:19 | this is great for images with large blocks
of color that are going to the Web that might
| | 01:23 | have a little bit of
transparency. Nothing too complex.
| | 01:26 | So very small icons and things
like that will be great for a GIF.
| | 01:30 | You also have the ability
to save things out as a JPEG.
| | 01:32 | Now, depending on the overall size and quality
of the photograph, a JPEG image might be suitable
| | 01:38 | for print or Web; it just depends.
| | 01:39 | You have to check with your
printer to see if they accept JPEG files.
| | 01:43 | JPEGs, though, mostly are the imaging
standard for photographs on the Web,
| | 01:47 | so if you're sending out a photo to the Web,
chances are you're going to save that as a
| | 01:50 | JPEG. You just have to make sure that
you nail down the size of that JPEG.
| | 01:55 | We also have the ability to save images out
as a PNG, or Portable Network Graphic, and PNG
| | 02:00 | is great for objects with a lot of transparency,
complex transparency, and opacity, like drop
| | 02:06 | shadows, and things like that, that
you're going to be sending out to the Web.
| | 02:09 | So if you have used GIMP as your design tool
of choice for creating Web graphics that have
| | 02:14 | a lot of transparency, and a lot of opacity
changes in them, PNG graphics are going to
| | 02:19 | be perfect for that.
| | 02:20 | You also have the ability to send out TIFF
images -- that's T-I-F or T-I-F-F, depending on
| | 02:27 | the file extension -- and these are
going to be great for printing as well.
| | 02:31 | One last thing to note is that you also
have the ability to send out a Photoshop image,
| | 02:35 | a .psd file from GIMP, which will allow you
to send a native Photoshop copy of whatever
| | 02:42 | you're working on inside of
GIMP to someone running Photoshop.
| | 02:45 | This is great for printers who are using
the Adobe Creative Suite, or anybody else that
| | 02:48 | you might need to share a Photoshop file
with, so that's available to you as well.
| | 02:52 | If I wanted to save this out as a JPEG file,
though, I would just select JPEG from this
| | 02:56 | menu, and click Export.
| | 02:58 | Once I click Export, I'm going to get the
JPEG export options, where you get to pick
| | 03:03 | your Quality setting. Again, this is going
to be dependent on what you want in terms
| | 03:07 | of how good you want the quality to be,
versus how large you want the file size to be.
| | 03:11 | You can also say Show a preview right now,
and that'll show you a preview of what this
| | 03:15 | is going to look like in the image window.
| | 03:18 | If you tone down the Quality setting,
you'll get an actual representation of what this
| | 03:22 | looks like. You'll also
get a File size calculation.
| | 03:25 | So backing the Quality down to something like
60, in this case, reduces the file size to 293K.
| | 03:32 | That's for this whole image.
| | 03:33 | This image is pretty huge, and the quality
is not that bad; it's not degraded hardly
| | 03:37 | at all, so I think that's okay.
| | 03:39 | You can also go into the Advanced Options
here, and you can choose whether or not to
| | 03:43 | Optimize, add in the Progressive,
save the thumbnails, add comments.
| | 03:47 | Whatever you want to do
here is totally up to you.
| | 03:49 | I'll collapse this up for now, and
then you can just choose Export.
| | 03:53 | Once you choose Export, it's going to save
that file to wherever you specified it to
| | 03:56 | go. In this case,
I set it to go to my Desktop.
| | 03:59 | So if I go out now, and I hide GIMP temporarily,
I should see the bulldog.jpg file right there
| | 04:04 | on my Desktop, which I can then access
and open up in any application that I want.
| | 04:09 | If I bring GIMP back into the picture, I
can then export this file out as anything else
| | 04:14 | that I need to, and then I can close it, or
save it as a .xcf file to exchange with other
| | 04:19 | GIMP users as well.
| | 04:21 | So hopefully you now have a better understanding
of how the export feature works inside of
| | 04:25 | GIMP, and also some of the instances in which
you might want to use the export feature, whether
| | 04:30 | you're saving out for print, or saving out
for Web, and hopefully you understand now
| | 04:34 | some of the different file formats that are
associated with each one of those as well.
| | 04:37 |
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| Printing your work| 00:00 | When it comes to printing things out of GIMP,
it's actually a relatively straightforward process.
| | 00:05 | In order to print things, all you have to
do is go to the File menu, and choose Print,
| | 00:08 | or you can simply hit Command+P or Control+P
on your keyboard, and when you do that, it's
| | 00:12 | going to launch this external application
labeled Print, which you may have to launch
| | 00:15 | from your dock if you are on a Mac.
| | 00:17 | And once you do that, it's going
to bring up the Print dialog box.
| | 00:21 | In the general section, you're just setting
up basic parameters, like what printer you're
| | 00:24 | printing to, the range of pages you're printing,
and also how many copies you're going to generate.
| | 00:29 | You have also got a Page Setup dialog box, which
allows you to control both the Layout, and the Paper.
| | 00:33 | So, you can choose things like whether or not
it's Two-sided, Pages per side, Page ordering,
| | 00:38 | Only print, you can Scale it, you can
say Paper type, Paper source, Output tray,
| | 00:43 | Paper size, and Orientation of the papers.
| | 00:46 | So for instance, if I want to change
that to Landscape, I could do that there.
| | 00:49 | You could also go into the Image Settings.
| | 00:51 | When you go into the Image Settings, you get
a nice Preview window over here of what it's
| | 00:54 | going to look like.
| | 00:55 | You can then increase or decrease the size
of the image, change the X and Y resolutions
| | 00:59 | on the image, change the positioning
of it, and make sure that it's Center.
| | 01:03 | Then you can also choose to Ignore Page Margins,
if you wish, and also Draw Crop Marks on it.
| | 01:08 | If you were to hit Print Preview, this
would launch the default Print Preview option on
| | 01:11 | your operating system.
| | 01:12 | For the Mac, that's going to be using the
Preview application, so it's going to look
| | 01:16 | something like this.
| | 01:17 | And when that opens, you get a good
idea of what it's going to look like.
| | 01:20 | You can zoom in and out on it, check the
full page layout, and then once you close that,
| | 01:24 | you can go back into GIMP, and you could go
ahead and print this document if you had a
| | 01:28 | printer hooked up to your machine. I don't
currently, but if I did, I could just hit
| | 01:32 | Print, it would automatically go,
and I would be finished.
| | 01:35 | So it's relatively straightforward
to set up a nice print outside of GIMP.
| | 01:39 | All you have to do is come in, and this is,
again, a click and pick kind of dialog box.
| | 01:43 | You click until you find something
you like, and then you stick with it.
| | 01:46 | Once you get it done, you then just exit
out of the dialog box, and you can continue
| | 01:51 | working, or simply save,
and close your project.
| | 01:53 |
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ConclusionGoodbye| 00:00 | Well, we've come to the
end of our journey with GIMP.
| | 00:03 | I hope that you had as much fun
learning as I did teaching.
| | 00:06 | I'm confident that you now have all of the
necessary skills to start working in your
| | 00:09 | own projects inside of GIMP,
| | 00:11 | and I hope that you're able to implement
some of the workflow suggestions I've given you
| | 00:15 | along the way as well.
| | 00:16 | If you would like more information
about GIMP, check out gimp.org.
| | 00:20 | This is going to give you some great information
about the latest releases of GIMP, and also
| | 00:23 | different ways that you can use the software.
| | 00:25 | You can also check out the Feature Overview at
gimp.org/features, which gives you an introduction
| | 00:31 | to all of the new features
they've introduced in GIMP 2.8.
| | 00:35 | You can also check out the GIMP Tutorials
page at gimp.org/tutorials to see all of the
| | 00:40 | different ways that they suggest using GIMP, and different
techniques for creating different images and styles.
| | 00:46 | Again, I want to thank you for
joining me for GIMP Essential Training.
| | 00:50 | My name is Justin Seeley, and I
hope to see you again real soon.
| | 00:54 |
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